changing working directory

[tiffany saran]

Hi everyone,

I recently updated to Stata 15. In the main window, I used to be able to change the working directory by clicking on the appropriate folder below the command box. Now, I can only see the working directory, but I can no longer change it. (See before and after images below). How can I change it back to the old system, so that I can simply click on the folder I want?

[Nick Cox]

I would just use the

cd

command but no doubt there's a GUI way to do it too.

[Chinh Nguyen (StataCorp)]

Unfortunately, the control that Stata used to implement that feature was deprecated in macOS a few years ago so we had to change it to a text control that simply displays the current working directory in Stata 15 just like the Windows and Unix versions. You can still change the current directory from the GUI using File > Change working directory... menu item on all platforms.

[Sarah Edgington]

You can change your working directory from the file menu.

What you show in your first image was not the default layout for Stata 14.2 for Windows. So either you found a way to change the preferences to show the directory that way or the default on a mac was different. I was not able to find a preference option that changed that so my suspicion is that it's a mac vs. windows difference.

As an aside, it looks like your second picture is Stata 12, not Stata 15. If you have multiple versions on your computer you might want to check that your shortcuts are assigned the way you think they are. I doubt that will change the appearance of the working directory, though.