Destring a Month-Year variable in order to apply the tsset command for a time graph

[Aziz Essouaied]

Hi Stata people;

I'm using Stata 13.1 version with this data:

* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input str14 Month long(Imports_in_Millions_of_USD Trade_Balance_in_Millions_of_USD)
"January 2023"   327789  -69960
"February 2023"  323412  -70521
"March 2023"     317232  -60321
"April 2023"     323721  -72756
"May 2023"       316947  -66066
"June 2023"      315873  -64806
"July 2023"      318530  -64607
"August 2023"    318137  -59631
"September 2023" 323864  -62222
"October 2023"   325116  -64333
"November 2023"  321284  -64754
"December 2023"  324802  -64915
"January 2024"   326028  -66859
"February 2024"  335099  -69341
"March 2024"     329499  -68547
"April 2024"     338483  -75905
"May 2024"       337701  -76632
"June 2024"      339613  -74180
"July 2024"      346900  -79886
"August 2024"    344020  -71444
"September 2024" 354823  -85014
"October 2024"   339939  -73727
"November 2024"  351755  -78239
"December 2024"  364581  -98062
"January 2025"   401158 -130652
"February 2025"  401120 -122662
end

The goal is to transform the 'Month" variable into a variable on which I can apply the "tsset" command and draw a time graph for the other two variables.

Ant help please? With many thanks!

[Nick Cox]

Did you try looking at the help, say

help datetime

-- because it answers this and many other similar questions?

This example yields to simple technique:

gen mdate = monthly(Month, "MY")

format mdate %tm 

 tsset mdate