Chapter 5
Opening Data Files
In This Chapter
Understanding the SPSS file format
Reading a simple text file into SPSS
Transferring data from another application into SPSS
Saving SPSS data in various formats
You don’t need to put your data into the computer more than once. If you’ve entered your data in another program, you can copy it from there into SPSS — because every program worth using has some form of output that can serve as input to SPSS. This chapter discusses ways to transfer data into and out of SPSS.
Getting Acquainted with the SPSS File Format
SPSS has its own format for storing data and writes files with the .sav extension. This file format contains special codes and usually can’t be used to export your data to another application. It’s used only for saving SPSS data that you want to read back into SPSS at a later time. Several example files in this format are copied to your computer as part of the normal SPSS installation. These files can be found in the same directory as your SPSS installation. You can load any one of them by choosing File ⇒ Open ⇒ Data and selecting ...
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