Issues with accented characters import spss

[Federico Stronati]

Hello everyone,

I need to import a .sav type file in Stata to work with it. Moreover, I am not interested in all the variables inside this .sav file and I'd like to import just a subset of them.

My problem is: one of the variables I am interested in has an accent in the name and when I try to import the file I get the error "invalid syntax" (r198).

This is the code I am running:

import spss var1 var2 età using "myfile.sav"


How can I solve this problem?

Alternatively I could run:

import spss using "myfile.sav"

and then keep only the variables I am interested in, but since the file is quite big and I need to loop over 20 of these files it would take ages.

Thanks in advance for your attention,
Kind regards

Federico.

[Bjarte Aagnes]

Possible bug, contact https://www.stata.com/support/tech-support/contact/

[Joseph Coveney]

How can I solve this problem?

Seems to be a bug. Reproducible here:

version 18.0

clear *

quietly set obs 1

forvalues i = 1/2 {
    generate byte var`i' = 1
}

generate byte etá =1

quietly export spss using myfile
quietly export excel using myfile.xlsx, sheet(myfile) firstrow(variables)
quietly save myfile

drop _all
use var1 var2 etá using myfile

drop _all
quietly import excel var1 var2 etá using myfile.xlsx, sheet(myfile)

drop _all
capture noisily import spss var1 var2 etá using myfile.sav

erase myfile.sav
erase myfile.xlsx
erase myfile.dta

exit

I tried using the GUI for importing and that's even weirder (and equally unsuccessful). I didn't expect it would, but unicode translate didn't help either, at least when using my guess for encoding.

I recommend reporting this to StataCorp Technical Support.

If you're in a hurry, you could look into Stat/Transfer. It's not free, but I've confirmed that it does work in this case even when specifying a variable subset.

[Federico Stronati]

Dear Bjarte Aagnes and Joseph Coveney,
thanks a lot for your answers. I'll report it to the StataCorp Technical Support. Very useful also the tip with Stat\Transfer!

Thanks again, best regards
Federico