File not Stata format

[Morien El Haj]

Hello

I am new to Stata and I am using Stata 12 on apple. My supervisor has the full dataset (more than a million values) and ran my do file on his server. By doing this, a new and smaller dataset is generated. I now want to use that new generated dataset, but I cannot open it in my Stata. I get the following message:

. use datasetcoeff8.dta
file datasetcoeff8.dta not Stata format
r(610);

I have Stata 12 and I think my supervisor does too. However, I googled a bit and found that a possible solution is the command USE13 if the file is from a newer version, which I tried, but it also failed.

. use13 datasetcoeff8.dta

Converting file datasetcoeff8.dta
_use13_convert(): 3498 Invalid file format: 118
use13(): - function returned error
<istmt>: - function returned error
r(3498);

Can you help me further?

[Leonardo Guizzetti]

Welcome to the Statalist. The error you have received (cryptically) told you the issue. The version of the dta file is 118. Version 118 was specific to Stata 14 to 17 (see -help dta-). Therefore, your supervisor is using a newer version than Stata 12. In general, Stata cannot open dta versions from higher (newer) releases of Stata. it will be necessary to use -saveold, version()- to specify that you want to save the dataset with an earlier dta specification so an older version of Stata can open the file.

[Morien El Haj]

Thanks! The deadline of my master thesis is in two days and I cannot reach my supervisor to edit it the file. Is there please someone who can run my do file with the dataset which I cannot open due to my old version of Stata? It is a very short do file so not a lot of work...
I know it says in the guidelines of this forum that you can't just ask people to send you private, but I really need this to finish my thesis. I hope someone can help me!!!

[Morien El Haj]

Problem solved! I can use SPSS for free via my school, so I could import the Stata file in SPSS, then copy paste the values in Excel (fortunately, they were not many values) and then import the Excel in my old version of Stata :D