1. Comparison of different output options from Stata
Emma Slaymaker
Milly Marston
Estelle Mclean

2. Output- Stata’s weak spot?
Stata has lacked commands to export nicely formatted results
This is changing –
Stata 13 introduced putexcel and _docx
These have been expanded in Stata 14
User written commands for exporting particular sets of results
Creative thinking with existing commands will get you a long way

3. Commands to output results
Existing:
outsheet (reshape and collapse)
file write
New in Stata 13:
putexcel
_docx
User- written:
estout

4. Example data Using one of Stata’s example datasets
To get it type sysuse nlsw88,clear
The do file for this presentation is on the CSM webpage
Data from US National Longitudinal Survey of Mature and Young women (I think).
Data on mean hourly wage by industry and some background characteristics.

5. Sample results (1): graph of hourly wage by industry

6. Sample results (2): Table showing the proportion of women who were in a union and the proportion who were college graduates, across the different industries.

7. Sample results (3): Linear regression of hourly wage by industry and background characteristics

8. outsheet turns datasets into spreadsheet format
outsheet saves the dataset in memory to a text file in a delimited format
Most spreadsheet software will read this
but won’t read a Stata dataset
Default is a tab-delimited format
columns of data (variables) are separated by tabs
You can specify other delimiters

9. To simply make a table that you can use in Word or Excel
Three steps:
Use collapse to get the summaries you want
Use reshape to arrange the dataset like a spreadsheet table
Use outsheet to save this as a text file

10. estout saves regression results in a text or HTML file
A user written command, to get it type:
net search estout,pkg
Click on the first entry and then the install link.
Produces a text file containing stored estimates
Step 1) Run regression model
Step 2) Store results using estimates store mymodel
Step 3) Use estout to create the results file
Many, many options- best to look at the website:

11. _docx: Make your own Word documents
This is a Mata command
Mata is one of Stata’s programming languages
access it from within Stata using mata prefix
Makes an Open Office Word document
From your do file you can insert
text,
graphs,
data from Stata’s memory
matrices
return results
You can build custom tables
You can format the contents of the document

12. _docx: Make your own Word documents
You tell Stata that you want a new word document and give it a file handle
a short name to refer to it by
Stata creates the file in memory
As you carry out your analysis you send results to the file
When you save the file, it is written to disk. You won’t see anything until you save it.
You can write the file in any order, and go back and edit it.

13. _docx- the downsides It all seems a bit half-finished
Some of the documentation is not very helpful
A lot of this isn’t documented in Stata help or the manuals, but this website is very useful-
There is still a lot of formatting that you can’t do.
Although the command writes an Open Office XML file, you can’t get at the XML

14. putexcel to make a spreadsheet of results
Quick and easy command
Can make workbooks with multiple sheets
Can add in all types of results and graphs (v 14 only)
Need to manipulate stored estimates and returned results for best effect
Can modify existing workbooks, and retain cell formats
Control formats- better in Stata 14 than 13

15. putexcel the downsides
You have to specify destination cell references
If the number of items in your results change then you need to update the destination references
To fix this:
you either need a lot of programming
or a lot of work editing your do file

16. The file command Lets you read and write files outside Stata
Files either binary or text
Simple principle
Straightforward syntax
Totally flexible
A how to guide:

17. file write to make custom text files
Use with loops
Extract results from return or ereturn
Format them
Send them to the text file
Can optionally add tags for XML or LaTeX

18. Comparison of the different options
putexcel
file write
mata _docx
File format:
Excel- widely used
Not tied to particular software
Makes an Open Office doc
Control over formatting results
Can’t format results (Stata 13)
Good control over formatting (Stata 14)
Can format very well if include additional markup such as XML or LaTeX
Can format results but some limitations (table columns)
Ease of use
Quick and easy version of command
No simple option but easy to learn
No simple option, need to know a bit of Mata
Include graphs
No (Stata 13)
Yes (Stata 14)
No- not in text files
Yes - in HTML
Yes

19. Comparison of the different options
putexcel
file write
mata _docx
How much work to map out a structure for the results
Easy to overwrite results, you must specify the correct row numbering
No need to specify row numbers but you need structure do file to make sure things are written in correct columns
Need to organise results and navigate row numbers in tables
Sequence for writing the file
You can write the worksheet in any order
Only writes in order from top left to bottom right
Can write and later modify things
Number of files that can be written to at one time
Only write to one file at a time with advanced syntax
Easy to write to different files
Can send output to different doc files from within same do file

20. What are they good for? file write putexcel mata _docx Flexibility
Tables
Fast execution
Repeated outputs
putexcel
Quickly dropping unformatted results into Excel
Single outputs
mata _docx
Including image files into document
Putting entire dataset into document (e.g. r(table) )
With additional markup (e.g. xml):
- Lovely formatting
- Structured workbooks