Is it possible to run a Stata do-file from within MS Excel?

[Ingo Brooks]

Dear all,

My do-file imports sample data from an MS Excel spreadsheet, then prepares and analyzes the sample data, and finally exports the results to MS Excel by aid of the

putexcel

command.

The respective analysis needs to be updated once a month and it would be great if this could be done right from within the Excel spreadsheet, i.e. without having to manually open Stata and then running the do-file there. Is it somehow possible to run a Stata do-file from within MS Excel (i.e. by aid of some VBA code)? Thanks a lot for your thoughts on this.

Best,
Ingo

[Joseph Coveney]

I've never used it, but apparently you can access Stata from within Microsoft applications. At Stata's command line, type

help automation

and follow the hyperlinks that come up. Again, I don't have any personal experience with it and so I don't know whether what you'll find there can be made to achieve your objective, but it's worth looking into.

[Bjarte Aagnes]

https://www.stata.com/support/faqs/windows/batch-mode/ describe how to run Stata for Windows in batch mode which seems to be an alternative.

[Ingo Brooks]

Joseph and Bjarte,

Thanks a lot for your help. On my Windows machine, I finally managed to run a Stata do-file from within Excel by aid of the following VBA script (which I placed in an Excel module):

Sub runStataDoFile()

    Dim StataExec, DoFile As String
    Dim wsh As Object

    ' Execution of the do-file
    StataExec = """C:\Program Files\Stata17\StataMP-64.exe"""
    DoFile = """<folder of the Stata do-file>\ExcelStata_Test.do"""
    Set wsh = VBA.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
    wsh.Run StataExec & " /e do " & DoFile

End Sub

In the above code, <folder of the Stata do-file> refers to the actual folder where the do-file is located.

Best,
Ingo