Re: [Gretl-users] Panel data: xlsx & csv
On Tue, 21 Feb 2017, Henrique Andrade wrote:
I'm trying to analyze panel data for the first time using Gretl
and I
realized something (IMHO) weird. Gretl can open a csv file with
non-numeric values but can't do that using xslx file. Please take a
look at the commands (and the files attached):
open panel.xlsx --coloffset=1 --rowoffset=1 # not working
open panel.csv # working
Is it possible to circumvent that behavior and open panel data stored
in xlsx files?
I's very much easier for gretl to parse CSV data than xlsx. So going
via CSV is recommended in case of complications such as non-numeric
variables. (Panel data as such is not the issue here, just the
non-numeric values.)
It would clearly be possible in principle to implement handling of
non-numeric data for xls and xlsx (and gnumeric and ods) input but it
would be a lot of work. Since all spreadsheet programs can save as CSV
(and anything they _can't_ save as CSV would not be intelligible to
gretl) that work seems a low priority.
Allin