Restrict decimal places in -tabstat results exported to Excel via -putexcel

[Emil Alnor]

I want to export a lot of descriptive statistics produced via -tabstat to Excel via -putexcel. I am working on a remote server which is not too happy about exporting results containing 16 digits to my PC. Therefore I need to restrict the number of decimals which are in the resulting excelfile. It seems, that using the format() option in -tabstat only restricts the decimal places in the Stata output, but not in the results which are exported to Excel:

putexcel set test, modify
sysuse auto
tabstat weight gear_ratio turn, by(rep78) save format(%9.1f)
forval x = 1/5{
    putexcel b`x'=matrix(r(Stat`x'))
}

How can I restric the number of decimals in the Excel results? The remote server won't let me modify anything in Excel using Excel, i.e., I need to do it all via the Stata commands. In my real data I have 43 variables, 4 descriptive statistics for 5 subgroups, so I am not sure that storing the results in new variables (43*4*5=860) with numbers rounded to 3 decimal places are effecient.

[Maarten Buis]

You could use the new table command and export to Word, and than move that to Excel (exporting directly to Excel still maintains all digit, but with Word you first loose it.)

sysuse auto, clear
table (rep78) (var), stat(mean weight gear_ratio turn) nformat(%6.0f weight)
collect style cell var[weight], nformat(%6.0f)
collect style cell var[gear_ratio], nformat(%6.2f)
collect style cell var[turn], nformat(%6.1f)
collect preview

collect export c:\temp\foo.docx, replace

[Emil Alnor]

Thanks Maarten, using the table command instead was the solution. Only problem is that it is very slowly in exporting results, compared to -tabstat.