Stata – Export a Detailed Codebook to Word, Excel or LaTeX

asdocx is a Stata package that can export output from almost all Stata commands. This post discusses how to export the output from the codebook command in a detailed format. To generate a compact codebook, see this post . The codebook command examines the variable names, labels, and data to produce a codebook describing the dataset.

Detailed Codebook

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The codebook command provides information about the variables in a dataset. It’s a way to quickly understand the structure, type, and distribution of variables. The detailed codebook of asdocx provides a detailed description of the properties and key statistics of the data in Stata memory.

When you run the codebook command with the option detail, you’ll get output that includes:

1. Variable Name: The name of the variable.
2. Type: The type of variable (e.g., numeric, string).
3. Format: The display format of the variable (e.g., %9.0g).
4. Valid Values: The number of non-missing values.
5. Missing Values: The number of missing values.
6. Non-missing values
7. Unique Values: The number of unique values a variable takes.
8. Mean/Minimum/Maximum: For numeric variables, you’ll see the mean, minimum, and maximum values.
9. Percentiles: From 5^th percentile up to 99^th percentile.
10. Range:
11. Notes: Any notes associated with the variable.
12. Labels: Value labels, if they are assigned to the variable.

asdocx can export the output to MS Word, Excel or LaTeX formats. The default output format is is .docx, therefore, if you do not use the option save(), the file will be written to MyFile.docx.

 

  Export detailed codebook to MS Word

The syntax for the detailed codebook is:

asdocx codebook [varlist], replace detailed

In the above code, the [varlist] is optional, therefore, if we leave it out, codebook will be generated for all variables. Instead, if we wanted a codebook for some specific variables, then we would provide list of those variables. Consider the following example, where we want to create a codebook table for mpg, price, and trunk.

asdocx codebook mpg price trunk , replace detailed

 

Example of codebook for all variables

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Let us create a compact codebook for all variables and send the output to MS Word and then to MS Excel

*Load the working women dataset
sysuse nlsw88, clear

* Send a compact codebook to MS Word
asdocx codebook, replace detailed

The output file can be downloaded from here.

 

  Export detailed codebook to Excel from Stata

Since the default output format is MS Word, therefore, we did not use the save() option. If we wanted to send the output to MS Excel, then we must use the save(Myfile.xlsx) option. Myfile can be any valid file name. The extension .xlsx is what asdocx uses to identify the output format.

*Load the working women dataset
sysuse nlsw88, clear

* Send a compact codebook to MS Excel
asdocx codebook, save(Myfile.xlsx) replace

The output file can be downloaded from here.
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  Export in HTML format

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Codebook can be exported in the html format by using the option save(MyCodeBook.html) where MyCodebook can be any valid file name. All you need is to attach the .html extension to the file.

*Load the working women dataset
 webuse nhanes2b, clear

 * Send a compact codebook to HTML
asdocx codebook, save(MyCodeBook.html) replace detailed

 

Codebook for nhanes2b.dta

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Last saved: 8 Sep 2018 17:31

Observations : 10351

Variables: 57

Data label:
Details of the variables