Date:         Fri, 17 Jun 2005 21:09:45 -0700
Reply-To:     Michael Healy <healym@earthlink.net>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Michael Healy <healym@earthlink.net>
Subject:      Re: Making Excel SPSS friendly
Comments: To: "Peck, Jon" <peck@spss.com>
In-Reply-To:  <5CFEFDB5226CB54CBB4328B9563A12EE02114B7C@hqemail2.spss.com>
Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Yes, I've experienced that too.  Those pesky invisible characters drove me
nuts!

on 6/17/05 5:30 AM, Peck, Jon at peck@spss.com wrote:

> I have not had that experience, but I can believe it could happen.  We regret
> the bug, but it has now been fixed.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
> Sarraf, Shimon A
> Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 7:24 AM
> To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: [SPSSX-L] Making Excel SPSS friendly
>
> John,
>
> These tab like characters (aka "something invisible here") seem to be a
> problem when running macros.  We had one analyst spend a few hours trying to
> debug his macro only to find out these extra tab like characters at the end of
> macro calls were making things impossible to run.  Because they were not
> visible, it took a while to identify the problem.
>
> Shimon
>
>       -----Original Message-----
>       From: SPSSX(r) Discussion on behalf of Peck, Jon
>       Sent: Fri 6/17/2005 7:10 AM
>       To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>       Cc:
>       Subject: Re: Making Excel SPSS friendly
>
>
>
>       This is a bug in SPSS 13 that has been fixed for SPSS 14.  The problem
> is that the material from Excel is being pasted with formatting rather than as
> plain text.  However, when the syntax file is saved, it is saved as plain
> text, which is why the grid cells disappear when you reopen it.  Pasting in
> WordPad or another plain text editor gets the plain text version of the
> material.
>
>       However, as far as we know, this formatting is harmless: if you run the
> syntax with the formatting, it should work just fine (at least, that has been
> my experience).
>
>       Regards,
>       Jon Peck
>
>       -----Original Message-----
>       From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
> michael healy
>       Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 4:27 PM
>       To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>       Subject: [SPSSX-L] Making Excel SPSS friendly
>
>       Hi,
>          I do many analyses like this: I copy the variable lists and variable
> labels from the variable view section of an SAV file and paste them into
> excel.  I then use Excel's string and concatenation functions to rename
> variables, create variable lists, etc.  I then paste the Excel-generated
> transformation syntax back into my syntax editor.
>
>       I'm finding that when I paste from Excel to SPSS that I'm getting
> pseudo-tables--that is, lists of commands that are formatted in boxes as if
> they were a Word-like table.  After closing and re-opening the file, the
> tables are no longer displayed.  Also, I find that there are invisible
> paragraph or tab like characters after the end of many of my commands (like,
> "rename vars (x = y).<something invisible here>") that need to be removed by
> find-and-replace.
>
>       Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get SPSS and Excel to work
> together better?  I'm using Excel 2003 and SPSS 13.
>
>       Thanks, Mike