General Statistical Packages Comparisons - Agricultural Statistical Data Analysis Using Stata - page 12

Figure 1.5 Data Editor window as it appears on a Windows PC. It will appear somewhat differ-
ently on other operating systems.
can be invoked by typing edit in the Command area of the Main
window. The Data Editor also can be opened so that changes cannot
be made by typing browse in the Command window.
The Data Editor works just like any spreadsheet. If you are familiar
with Excel, the Data Editor works in a similar fashion where data are
entered in cells defined by the row number and column heading. In
Stata, as in most statistical software, the rows are referred to as cases or
observations , while the columns are referred to as variables . The selected
cell will appear with a black rectangle. The Data Editor is not capable
of producing a noncontiguous dataset; therefore, if you select a cell by
itself and enter a value, the Data Editor will enter missing values in all
the empty cells from the first cell (row 1, column 1) to the cell in which
you have entered data. The missing data will appear as periods (.).
At the top of the Data Editor are several buttons. One such button
is the Filter button. Data can be filtered so that specific cases or vari-
ables don't appear. This does not affect analysis, however, but doing
an analysis on a subset of the data is not a problem as most commands
allow this.
The Variables button is used to hide or show the Variables and
Properties region on the right of the Data Editor window. The
Properties button hides or shows the Properties region of the window.