Dictinction between #null and 0 in stata

[Medel-Svensson]

Hello my friends. I am a nordic guy writing my bachelor's thesis in economics using stata for descriptive analysis. I have aquired a microsoft excel file with data. In this excel file wherever someone has failed or not wanted to answer the answer is described by "#null" and whenever using a dummy variable the answer is described by 1 and 0. My problem is how i make the disctinction between "#null" and "0" in stata when i import the excel file? It just shows "0" for all entries. I am using stata 12 for the moment.

Thanks in advanced, Svensson.

[Roberto Ferrer]

Can you replace the "#null" with something else before doing the import?

Can you attach a file with the exact offending text? (just an example, not the complete data).

[Medel-Svensson]

Can you replace the "#null" with something else before doing the import?

Can you attach a file with the exact offending text? (just an example, not the complete data).

Possibly, but is there a way to replace all "#null"'s in excel with one command? Or else it would take me forever to replace all manually.

Not sure if you wanted me to just copy past a part of the data set in a new excel file?
The respondents in this poll have either answered yes or no (1 or 0) or nothing at all "#null". The people answering nothing won't do me any good in my analysis so i need to make a distinction.



excelfile.xlsx

[Elan Cohen]

I'm able to import fine using import excel "excelfile.xlsx", clear first. Stata automatically replace the "#null" with missing and leaves the 0's and 1's as is. Can you show us what exactly you type and what the Stata data looks like?

- Elan

[Medel-Svensson]

For some reason it does exibit empty cells in stata when i copy paste just the relevant part of my excel dataset(i have a huge dataset with both dummy and other questions with cathegorical answers 1-10). Well i guess you could call it a solution. Probably something to do with the format.

[Roberto Ferrer]

Possibly, but is there a way to replace all "#null"'s in excel with one command? Or else it would take me forever to replace all manually.

Not necessarily true. MS Excel and many text editors have a search and replace feature that does all the work for you.

[Joe Canner]

In Excel, the keystroke is Ctrl-H and the menu item is under "Find & Select". Just put #NULL! in the "Find what" box and nothing in the "Replace with" box.