Alignment of Values of String variables

[OBUM EZEANOSIKE]

Good morning All
Please I have always had a problem importing from excel, I have read up the blogs and seem not to find a solution. I would appreciate some guidance
Below is my import command and the output. The values of the string variables come as shown, different alignments and ultimately each represent different values such that a simple tab, as below gives different counts for each alignment of the values.
Kindly guide on how to overcome that.
Thank you
Ezeanosike Obumneme

import excel "C:\Users\obumn\Desktop\HAND HYGIENE\Expoort Hand hygiene.xlsx", sheet("Sheet1") firstrow clear


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[OBUM EZEANOSIKE]

#1
Alignment of Values of String variables

Please I had difficulty copying and pasting the output Alignment of String Variables.docx

[William Lisowski]

Apparently the problem is that the data in your Excel worksheet has extra leading and trailing blank characters. The example below reproduces your problem, creating an Excel worksheet with extra blank characters in a string variable. Then it demonstrates using the trim function to resolve the problem.

. do "/var/folders/xr/lm5ccr996k7dspxs35yqzyt80000gp/T//SD20026.000000"

. * Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
. clear

. input str3 v

             v
  1. "a"  
  2. "a " 
  3. " a "
  4. end

. export excel test, firstrow(variables) replace
file test.xls saved

. clear

. import excel test, firstrow

. tab v

          v |      Freq.     Percent        Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
         a  |          1       33.33       33.33
          a |          1       33.33       66.67
         a  |          1       33.33      100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
      Total |          3      100.00

. replace v = trim(v)
(2 real changes made)

. tab v

          v |      Freq.     Percent        Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
          a |          3      100.00      100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
      Total |          3      100.00

.

[OBUM EZEANOSIKE]

Thank you so much William
It worked perfectly