How to open a file that is more from a more recent version of Stata into Stata13

[Soumya Upadhyay]

I have Stata 13 and when I try to open a file (that I downloaded from a website), my Stata gives an error ".dta too modern". I am not sure which version has been used to build that data , but is there a way I can open it in 13? Thank you!

[Clyde Schechter]

Well, the current version of Stata is 14, so if it's too modern for 13 it has to be 14. There are several features of version 14 data sets that are incompatible with Stata 13. And to my knowledge nobody has written a program that gets around these issues and allows version 13 to read a modified version of a version 14 data set. Your best bet is to contact the source of the version 14 data set and ask to have it saved as a version 13 data set using the -saveold- command with the -version()- option set to 13. If the data set contains Unicode characters or other novel features of Stata 14 data set there will be some loss of information, but probably for most purposes it will be fine.

Another option is to purchase Stata 14.

[Nick Cox]

Another option is to ask for a text file, e.g. comma- or tab-separated data file.