Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
If you have created a graph, the next File menu item, Start Graph
Editor, will invoke the graph editor, which allows you to make changes
and customize the graph on a Macintosh computer. This menu item is
not available on Unix or Windows PCs. I will have more to say about
graphing in a later chapter.
The Log item in the File menu is for starting logs, which record all
of your inputs as well as the results of commands. In other words, a
complete record of your session can be recorded and saved. There are
two types of files that can be created. One has a .log extension and is a
simple text file that can be opened by any program capable of reading
a text file, such as a word processor or text editor. The other type has
a .smcl extension that is in Stata's own format and is best viewed from
within Stata. All of the error codes maintain their red color, and the
links (blue color) are still active in these files when viewed in Stata. In
addition, all the formatting remains the same.
The Log menu item has a Begin submenu, which is how a log is
started. When started, you have the choice of creating either a .log
or .smcl file. The ability to create one or the other file type is not
available on a Unix computer. You also can suspend logging with the
Suspend submenu and, of course, resume with the Resume submenu.
You may wish to do this when you get off on a tangent, but I digress.
When you are finished with logging your session, you can select
the Close submenu, which will close the log file. This file then can be
viewed within Stata or, if it's been saved as a .log file, with any pro-
gram capable of opening a text file.
Finally, the Log menu has a Translate submenu, which allows you
to translate .smcl files to .log files and vice versa. This can be helpful
in getting results into other programs for publication, etc.
The next command under the File menu, Import, deals, as you
would expect, with importing data into Stata. The first command
is for importing Microsoft Excel
®
files (.xls, .xlsx). It allows you to
examine an Excel workbook, select specific worksheets, as well as cell
ranges, and import the data into Stata. The next four items are to
import text files in various formats. The first of which imports text
files created in a spreadsheet program. Importing text in a fixed for-
mat is for files that have fixed column spacing for each variable, but
no specific delimiter, such as a tab or comma character. The next item,
“Importing text in fixed format with a dictionary,” is a unique method
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