Liz's Stata Guide

Commands: Files

This page covers commands for working with files -- the commands that allow Stata to interact with your operating system to read in data and to output data.

use
Loads a Stata dataset (a file with the .dta extension) into memory.
use "filepath\mydataset"

clear
Clears Stata's memory -- of the dataset, as well as any labels, scalars, matrices or anything else you might have had defined.
clear

save
Saves the contents of memory to a Stata dataset.
save "filepath\mynewdataset"

insheet
Reads data into memory from a plain text file (delimited by commas or tabs).
insheet using "filepath\datafromexcel.txt"

input
Allows you to enter data directly into Stata, either from a .do file or interactively.
input varx vary; 2 3; 5 6;

outsheet
Writes data to a tab (or comma) seperated file.
outsheet varx vary using "filepath\results"

file management
Various techniques to avoid typing out the full filepath everytime you want to use one of these commands.