Problem appending new columns with outreg2

[Nabeela Alam]

Hello all,

I am having trouble appending the results of successive regressions to my output file on Stata12. This is baffling because:
a. I've used the do file with outreg2 commands on Stata10 before and it worked.
b. If I save the results to a new file the outreg2 command works, but I have a separate file for each regression result.

I'm attaching the code with the hope that someone can help me out:

outreg2 using /Users/nabeela/data/var/TABLE1_sep28, title (Table 1: Effect of X on Y - 1995-2005, Dependent variable - Y) ctitle (2SLS) drop(dyr*) bdec(3) sdec(3) alpha (0.01, 0.05, 0.10) addstat (LM (underid), e(idstat), p-val of LM, e(idp), Wald (weak instruments), e(rkf), Hansen J, e(j)) addnote("", year dummies not shown, Exogenous instrument - grt) label word append

The error message I get is:
in range not allowed
r(101);

I'd very much appreciate some pointers on this. Thanks!

Nabeela Alam

[Stephen Jenkins]

Try using a much pared down version of your command (i.e. omit options), and then start adding them back in so that you can see which one is causing a problem. If this doesn't help, then set trace on before running the command, and see which line is causing the problem. With all this information, you'd be in a better position to report back to the Forum ... to which: welcome! However, please take steps to maximize your chances of getting feedback -- respect Forum FAQ etiquette and (a) re-register using your real name (firstname lastname) via the Contact Us button at bottom right; and (b) post code and output using CODE delimiters, accessible via the advanced editor (A button, followed by # -- see the FAQ). Thank you.

[Isabel Martinez]

I had the same error message (Stata version 14.0 for Mac)

What seemed to cause the problem was the empty line in the note option:

addnote(" ", "some note text")

Using the option without an empty line it works:

addnote("some note text")

Interestingly, it is possible to add several lines of notes like this:

addnote("some note text", "a second line of note tex", "a third line of note text")

So the only thing that does not seem to work is the empty line.
I wonder wether this is a bug, since the helpfile suggests using " " to add an empty line.

[Giulia Ferrari]

I followed Isabel Martinez's advice and deleted the empty string in the lines of code that generated the original file, and no longer got the error message.
I had tried deleting the outreg2 options one by one before, but this had not helped.
Note that the empty string was in the bit of code that generated the file(s):

outreg2  using "myfile", nor2 nocons
excel tex  replace
title("title")
ctitle("ctitle") cttop("cttop")
addn("", "Time $S_TIME, $S_DATE", "Data from $S_FN");

However, the error message was generated following the line of code that appended the new column

outreg2 
using "myfile", eform nocons
alpha(0.001, 0.01, 0.05) symbol(***, **, *)
excel tex  append
ctitle("ctitle")
addstat(F, e(F_mi), Average RVI, e(rvi_avg_mi))
addtext(FE, yes);

it would be helpful to know whether this is a bug/new coding rule in Stata14, as I had previously run the do file in Stata12 and no error message had been returned.