exporting results from "fre" to excel with putexcel

[Patrick Abi Nader]

Hello all,

I hope this message finds you well!

I am looking for an efficient way to output the results from several computation of the user written command "fre" by Ben Jen into excel. I did not come across examples that show how to use putexcel with fre. Do either of you have any suggestions? The below code represents 10% of how many times I am computing "fre" and I do not want to manually have to type in each value. Any recommendations or suggestions will be very helpful.

fre hccat stuntingcat wastingcat weightcat anemia muaccat ///
if screening_number==1
by country, sort: fre hccat stuntingcat wastingcat weightcat anemia muaccat ///
if screening_number==1
by country, sort: fre hccat stuntingcat wastingcat weightcat anemia muaccat ///
if screening_number!=1 & screening_number==flag6
fre hccat stuntingcat wastingcat weightcat anemia muaccat ///
if screening_number!=1 & screening_number==flag6
by country, sort: fre hccat stuntingcat wastingcat weightcat anemia muaccat ///
if screening_number!=1 & screening_number==flag12
fre hccat stuntingcat wastingcat weightcat anemia muaccat ///
if screening_number!=1 & screening_number==flag12
by country, sort: fre hccat stuntingcat wastingcat weightcat anemia muaccat ///
if screening_number!=1 & screening_number==flag18
fre hccat stuntingcat wastingcat weightcat anemia muaccat ///
if screening_number!=1 & screening_number==flag18
by country, sort: fre hccat stuntingcat wastingcat weightcat anemia muaccat ///
if screening_number!=1 & screening_number==flag24
fre hccat stuntingcat wastingcat weightcat anemia muaccat ///
if screening_number!=1 & screening_number==flag24

Best wishes,
Patrick

[Mike Lacy]

I share your enthusiasm for the format of the output from -fre-. While -fre- save some results to a matrix, which could be output with -putexcel-, those results (see -return list- for -fre-) are in a bare-bones format. I'd suggest insteading exploring the -using- option of -fre- , with -tab- and -append- to output tables to a tab-separated file, which will import nicely into Excel.

foreach v of varlist hccat stuntingcat wastingcat weightcat anemia muaccat {
   fre `v' using "YourFile.tab" if screening_number ==1, tab append
}

[Patrick Abi Nader]

Hello Mike,

Thank you for your recommendation. Do I need a special software to open a .tab file? and how do I import it to Excel?

I have a Mac and I can't find a way to import the file to Excel.

Thank you
Patrick

[Patrick Abi Nader]

Never mind my last question, for some reason my Excel version wasn't reading/importing .tab files and after multiple attempts it is now reading it!

Thanks again for the recommendation.
I do have one remaining question is it possible to change the layout of the output? for example in the below code I would want to include countries next to each other by column and only output the percentage including missing values.

 
 foreach v of varlist hccat stuntingcat wastingcat weightcat anemia muaccat {    by country,sort: fre `v' using "YourFile.tab" if screening_number ==1, tab append }

Thank you
Patrick

[Mike Lacy]

As to whether -fre- can itself output only the percentages, including missing values, you'd want to read the -help- documentation for -fre- in detail and see if such options exist for -fre-. I can't think of any easy way to put the countries next to each other by column. I suppose you might output countries to different files, and then append them columnwise in Excel. (I'm not much of an Excel user; that might not be possible.)