Problem exporting .dta file to Excel

[Eleanor Barton]

I am trying to export my data from Stata so that a colleague using a different statistical software can work on it, but when I export it to Excel (which I have been doing using the drop down menu rather than code: File > Export > Data to Excel Spreadsheet, then "Save as" the file name and location I want, "save variable names to first row" and "output numeric values (not labels) of labeled variables") it doesn't save it as a .xls/.xlsx file that I can then open in Excel.

This is the code generate by the above menu commands:
export excel using "<<filename and path>>", firstrow(variables) nolabel
file <<filename and path>> saved

For some reason it saves it as a blank text document rather than an Excel file. Can anyone help?

[Andrew Musau]

What version of Stata do you have? All you need is to type:

export excel using myfile, replace

Then go to the folder identified by

pwd

to find the file "myfile.xlsx".