Numeric data become String data when transferred from excel to spss?!

[lukyiwing]

So I had some data from excel and I wanted to import it into SPSS to carry out T test.

View attachment 4732

it looks like this on excel. perfectly fine percentage data

however when it was imported to spss...it looks like this

View attachment 4733

it became string data and i dont know what happened.
all the percentages are gone and I can't afford to hand type the data into spss (400 entries )
I didn't do anything while transferring the data and now its stressing me out


sorry for the small screenshots. But basically its the data turned from nice percentage data to messy string data like 0.00001

 

[Londoner]

Hi,

This is a workaround: In Excel, change the format from % to decimals e.g. 99% to 0.99, then import to SPSS and it should be fine
Had the same problem before, not quite sure why that happens.

 

[lukyiwing]

I tried and it doesn't work
it still appears as string data urgh

 

[Injektilo]

You can easily run a t-test in Excel, if that's all you want to do.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/excel-help/ttest-HP005209325.aspx

If you're intent on using SPSS, the software doesn't allow percentages. How did you import it? Did you use the open command, or did you copy/paste data from Excel to SPSS?

Either way, even if the variable is being set to string, just change it back to numeric. It shouldn't affect the data at all.

 

[Berley]

You can easily change the data type from string to whatever you want. On the variable view tab, simply change string to numeric (as Injektilo says) -- I'd to two decimal places -- and then change the measurement to Scale.

 

[lukyiwing]

I tried working on percentage data before and it worked perfectly fine so yea :/
I used use the open command for both sets of data and one set worked while this doesn't
I tried simply changing the variable from string to numeric at the variable view tab but it changed my data into either 0 or 1

 

[GretaGarbo]

I tried simply changing the variable from string to numeric at the variable view tab but it changed my data into either 0 or 1

Then maybe the values are rounded. increase the number of decimal shown, also on the variable view tab.

Another trick is to include a first fake row in the excel file, that has legitimate values on all variables i.e. numeric values with decimal values on the correct places. Then the program will interpret them - assign them - as numeric. When you have read in the data file (with variables correctly classified) then you delete the first fake data row in spss.