5:16 p.m.
Hi
I have an xlsx datafile comprising 10 rivers labelled 1..10, 24
observations dated 2000-2023 plus 5 variables (See attached screenshot). I
have use File open command specifying it is an xlsx file which it reads and
then produces an error message.
F*ound 1 valid sheet*
*Found 11 Variables and 240 observations!!!*
*Name missing for variable 7 !!!*
I am using Gretll version 2025c
I get the same error message if I specify File, New Data set, Panel data
with n=10 and t=24 and then append the data.
The full dataset is also appended for information. Advice welcomed as I
cannot move forward without getting Gretl to read swhat is a basic XLSX
file. I have in earlier versions had no problems loading
similararly structured stacked time series for panel data analysis
*Brian Revell*
5:32 p.m.
On 12/15/25 18:16, Brian Revell wrote:
Hi
I have an xlsx datafile comprising 10 rivers labelled 1..10, 24
observations dated 2000-2023 plus 5 variables (See attached
screenshot). I have use File open command specifying it is an xlsx
file which it reads and then produces an error message.
F*ound 1 valid sheet*
*Found 11 Variables and 240 observations!!!*
*Name missing for variable 7 !!!*
I am using Gretll version 2025c
Strange thing (all on Debian):
1. clipboard method (copy+paste): works perfectly,
2. xlsx importing: got same error as Brian,
3. converted to ods: works, thought some fake variables were imported
(see attached file).
Marcin
5:38 p.m.
On 15/12/2025 18:16, Brian Revell wrote:
Hi
I have an xlsx datafile comprising 10 rivers labelled 1..10, 24
observations dated 2000-2023 plus 5 variables (See attached
screenshot). I have use File open command specifying it is an xlsx
file which it reads and then produces an error message.
F*ound 1 valid sheet*
*Found 11 Variables and 240 observations!!!*
*Name missing for variable 7 !!!*
I am using Gretll version 2025c
I get the same error message if I specify File, New Data set, Panel
data with n=10 and t=24 and then append the data.
The full dataset is also appended for information. Advice welcomed as
I cannot move forward without getting Gretl to read swhat is a basic
XLSX file. I have in earlier versions had no problems loading
similararly structured stacked time series for panel data analysis
What program did you use to create this file? For some bizarre reason,
cell L14 is nonempty, although it looks like it is. I'm not
knowledgeable enough with excel to explain why this happens, but:
1. the xml document contains the fragment "*<c r="L14"
t="s"><v>4</v></c>*", which I interpret as
"cell L14 contains 4",
although it's invisible to the eye (at least in LibreOffice and
Gnumeric)
2. If you navigate to the top of column L and press Crtl-down, the
cursor does indeed jump to cell L14 (again:tried this with both
LibreOffice and Gnumeric), although it seems to contain nothing.
This confuses the importer. If you delete a few columns to the right of
column G ("MSW_PCT"), then the file becomes readable.
I guess we could try to robustify our importer, but I have no idea on
how we could find a workaround for cases like this.
-------------------------------------------------------
Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)
Università Politecnica delle Marche
(formerly known as Università di Ancona)
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti
-------------------------------------------------------
7:04 p.m.
Many thanks Marcin for the appended file. Much appreciated.
I have now tried the cut and paste approach that has worked without
generating additional ghost variables.
It would be good to get a bug fix in Gretl for uploading Panel data
directly from an xlsx file ,however, without the addition of superfluous
empty variables or having to resort to a cut & paste approach.
Brian
On Mon, 15 Dec 2025 at 17:38, Marcin Błażejowski <marcin(a)gretlconference.org>
wrote:
On 12/15/25 18:16, Brian Revell wrote:
Hi
I have an xlsx datafile comprising 10 rivers labelled 1..10, 24
observations dated 2000-2023 plus 5 variables (See attached screenshot). I
have use File open command specifying it is an xlsx file which it reads and
then produces an error message.
F*ound 1 valid sheet*
*Found 11 Variables and 240 observations!!!*
*Name missing for variable 7 !!!*
I am using Gretll version 2025c
Strange thing (all on Debian):
1. clipboard method (copy+paste): works perfectly,
2. xlsx importing: got same error as Brian,
3. converted to ods: works, thought some fake variables were imported (see
attached file).
Marcin
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7:12 p.m.
Hi Jack
it was a genuine Excel xlsx file worksheet, so should pose no problems The
named variables are all Numeric. I have never saved it as an xml file type.
perhaps conversion (if that is what you did) introduced the error as my
original version only occupied columns A to F.
Brian
On Mon, 15 Dec 2025 at 17:37, Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti <
p002264(a)staff.univpm.it> wrote:
On 15/12/2025 18:16, Brian Revell wrote:
Hi
I have an xlsx datafile comprising 10 rivers labelled 1..10, 24
observations dated 2000-2023 plus 5 variables (See attached screenshot). I
have use File open command specifying it is an xlsx file which it reads and
then produces an error message.
F*ound 1 valid sheet*
*Found 11 Variables and 240 observations!!!*
*Name missing for variable 7 !!!*
I am using Gretll version 2025c
I get the same error message if I specify File, New Data set, Panel data
with n=10 and t=24 and then append the data.
The full dataset is also appended for information. Advice welcomed as I
cannot move forward without getting Gretl to read swhat is a basic XLSX
file. I have in earlier versions had no problems loading
similararly structured stacked time series for panel data analysis
What program did you use to create this file? For some bizarre reason,
cell L14 is nonempty, although it looks like it is. I'm not knowledgeable
enough with excel to explain why this happens, but:
1. the xml document contains the fragment "*<c r="L14"
t="s"><v>4</v></c>*", which I interpret as
"cell L14 contains 4",
although it's invisible to the eye (at least in LibreOffice and Gnumeric)
2. If you navigate to the top of column L and press Crtl-down, the
cursor does indeed jump to cell L14 (again:tried this with both LibreOffice
and Gnumeric), although it seems to contain nothing.
This confuses the importer. If you delete a few columns to the right of
column G ("MSW_PCT"), then the file becomes readable.
I guess we could try to robustify our importer, but I have no idea on how
we could find a workaround for cases like this.
-------------------------------------------------------
Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)
Università Politecnica delle Marche
(formerly known as Università di Ancona)
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti
-------------------------------------------------------
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To unsubscribe send an email to gretl-users-leave(a)gretlml.univpm.it
Website:
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8:51 p.m.
On Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 2:13 PM Brian Revell <bjr.newmail(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Jack
it was a genuine Excel xlsx file worksheet, so should pose no problems The named
variables are all Numeric. I have never saved it as an xml file type. perhaps conversion
(if that is what you did) introduced the error as my original version only occupied
columns A to F.
Just FYI, jack did not convert your file. An xslx file is in fact a
ZIP archive containing several XML files. And this one contains
invisible junk outside the range of the visible data, which is
confusing gretl.
Allin Cottrell
9:35 p.m.
Thanks for letting me know that. Explains why Gretl in turn was confusing
me. Might saving it as a CSV file have been less problematic to 2025c.
Though as I said, uploads of xlsx files to earlier versions of Gretl have
always been straightforward.
On Mon, 15 Dec 2025, 20:52 Cottrell, Allin, <cottrell(a)wfu.edu> wrote:
On Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 2:13 PM Brian Revell
<bjr.newmail(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> Hi Jack
> it was a genuine Excel xlsx file worksheet, so should pose no problems
The named variables are all Numeric. I have never saved it as an xml file
type. perhaps conversion (if that is what you did) introduced the error as
my original version only occupied columns A to F.
Just FYI, jack did not convert your file. An xslx file is in fact a
ZIP archive containing several XML files. And this one contains
invisible junk outside the range of the visible data, which is
confusing gretl.
Allin Cottrell
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8:18 a.m.
On 15/12/2025 22:35, Brian Revell wrote:
Thanks for letting me know that. Explains why Gretl in turn was
confusing me. Might saving it as a CSV file have been less problematic
to 2025c. Though as I said, uploads of xlsx files to earlier versions
of Gretl have always been straightforward.
Just for future reference, if you want to have a look at what you
/really/ get inside an xlsx file, here's what you can do:
1. Rename the file and change its extension to "zip" (eg, I renamed the
file you sent us to "Brian.zip")
2. Open the zip file with any application you want; if you're on
windows, I guess you might as well double-click on it
3. You'll see a hierarchical structure of files and folders. Go to
"xl/worksheets" and you'll see a file named "sheet1.xml"
4. You may open that file with any program that handles text. Notepad,
Word, whatever. However, I would suggest firefox, that handles the xml
format quite nicely (the absence of line breaks may be problematic
otherwise).
5. Note that each row has a "spans" attribute that tells you how many
non-empty columns you get. In your case, this number is 12 (I don't know
why)
6. If you navigate to row 14, you'll see that the L14 cell contains the
value "4", which is however marked as a shared string (t="s"). This is
obviously spurious in this case and you can't expect gretl to figure out
that you didn't really mean to put something invisible in there.
If you do this, you'll see clearly why the xlsx format is not really
ideal for storing data: some (most?) of the information it contains is
invisible to the naked eye, so to speak, and this may cause problems
when reading its contents. As you suggested, CSV is much better in that
respect.
Having said this, I'm wondering whether we can somehow handle cases like
this via a policy of considering as genuine data columns only the ones
that have a suitable string on row 1, and ignoring the rest.
-------------------------------------------------------
Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)
Università Politecnica delle Marche
(formerly known as Università di Ancona)
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti
-------------------------------------------------------
10:01 a.m.
Many thanks
One still has much to learn. Will try your suggestion to satisfy my
curiosity re xlsx format. Might saving in the old xls format avoid the
problem of ghost cells, though less of a general solution than the line1
string you suggest.
B
On Tue, 16 Dec 2025, 08:23 Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti, <
p002264(a)staff.univpm.it> wrote:
On 15/12/2025 22:35, Brian Revell wrote:
Thanks for letting me know that. Explains why Gretl in turn was confusing
me. Might saving it as a CSV file have been less problematic to 2025c.
Though as I said, uploads of xlsx files to earlier versions of Gretl have
always been straightforward.
Just for future reference, if you want to have a look at what you *really* get
inside an xlsx file, here's what you can do:
1. Rename the file and change its extension to "zip" (eg, I renamed the
file you sent us to "Brian.zip")
2. Open the zip file with any application you want; if you're on windows,
I guess you might as well double-click on it
3. You'll see a hierarchical structure of files and folders. Go to
"xl/worksheets" and you'll see a file named "sheet1.xml"
4. You may open that file with any program that handles text. Notepad,
Word, whatever. However, I would suggest firefox, that handles the xml
format quite nicely (the absence of line breaks may be problematic
otherwise).
5. Note that each row has a "spans" attribute that tells you how many
non-empty columns you get. In your case, this number is 12 (I don't know
why)
6. If you navigate to row 14, you'll see that the L14 cell contains the
value "4", which is however marked as a shared string (t="s"). This
is
obviously spurious in this case and you can't expect gretl to figure out
that you didn't really mean to put something invisible in there.
If you do this, you'll see clearly why the xlsx format is not really ideal
for storing data: some (most?) of the information it contains is invisible
to the naked eye, so to speak, and this may cause problems when reading its
contents. As you suggested, CSV is much better in that respect.
Having said this, I'm wondering whether we can somehow handle cases like
this via a policy of considering as genuine data columns only the ones that
have a suitable string on row 1, and ignoring the rest.
-------------------------------------------------------
Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)
Università Politecnica delle Marche
(formerly known as Università di Ancona)
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti
-------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Gretl-users mailing list -- gretl-users(a)gretlml.univpm.it
To unsubscribe send an email to gretl-users-leave(a)gretlml.univpm.it
Website:
https://gretlml.univpm.it/postorius/lists/gretl-users.gretlml.univpm.it/
11:42 p.m.
If you export Brian's file as CSV there are 5 empty columns at the end of
the series. If you put names in row 1 for each of these columns and save
your XLSX file, it can be read by Gretl. The unnamed 7th column is the
first of these columns.
John C Frain
3 Aranleigh Park
Rathfarnham
Dublin 14
Ireland
www.tcd.ie/Economics/staff/frainj/home.html
https://jcfrain.wordpress.com/
https://jcfraincv19.wordpress.com/
mailto:frainj@tcd.ie
mailto:frainj@gmail.com
On Tue, 16 Dec 2025 at 10:01, Brian Revell <bjr.newmail(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Many thanks
One still has much to learn. Will try your suggestion to satisfy my
curiosity re xlsx format. Might saving in the old xls format avoid the
problem of ghost cells, though less of a general solution than the line1
string you suggest.
B
On Tue, 16 Dec 2025, 08:23 Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti, <
p002264(a)staff.univpm.it> wrote:
> On 15/12/2025 22:35, Brian Revell wrote:
>
> Thanks for letting me know that. Explains why Gretl in turn was confusing
> me. Might saving it as a CSV file have been less problematic to 2025c.
> Though as I said, uploads of xlsx files to earlier versions of Gretl have
> always been straightforward.
>
> Just for future reference, if you want to have a look at what you
> *really* get inside an xlsx file, here's what you can do:
>
> 1. Rename the file and change its extension to "zip" (eg, I renamed the
> file you sent us to "Brian.zip")
>
> 2. Open the zip file with any application you want; if you're on windows,
> I guess you might as well double-click on it
>
> 3. You'll see a hierarchical structure of files and folders. Go to
> "xl/worksheets" and you'll see a file named "sheet1.xml"
>
> 4. You may open that file with any program that handles text. Notepad,
> Word, whatever. However, I would suggest firefox, that handles the xml
> format quite nicely (the absence of line breaks may be problematic
> otherwise).
>
> 5. Note that each row has a "spans" attribute that tells you how many
> non-empty columns you get. In your case, this number is 12 (I don't know
> why)
>
> 6. If you navigate to row 14, you'll see that the L14 cell contains the
> value "4", which is however marked as a shared string (t="s").
This is
> obviously spurious in this case and you can't expect gretl to figure out
> that you didn't really mean to put something invisible in there.
>
> If you do this, you'll see clearly why the xlsx format is not really
> ideal for storing data: some (most?) of the information it contains is
> invisible to the naked eye, so to speak, and this may cause problems when
> reading its contents. As you suggested, CSV is much better in that respect.
>
> Having said this, I'm wondering whether we can somehow handle cases like
> this via a policy of considering as genuine data columns only the ones that
> have a suitable string on row 1, and ignoring the rest.
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
> Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)
>
> Università Politecnica delle Marche
> (formerly known as Università di Ancona)
>
> r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
> http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti
> -------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Gretl-users mailing list -- gretl-users(a)gretlml.univpm.it
> To unsubscribe send an email to gretl-users-leave(a)gretlml.univpm.it
> Website:
> https://gretlml.univpm.it/postorius/lists/gretl-users.gretlml.univpm.it/
>
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12:34 a.m.
Perhaps I should be clearer. Gretl thinks that there are 5 extra columns
in the xlxs file because there is that invisible entry in L14. Exporting
the file from Excel as csv shows these extra 5 columns. Gretl also sees
these extra columns and has problems because the variable in the first
empty column has no name. If you delete the five columns following the
data in the xlsx file and save it, gretl will be able to read the file.
Alternatively, add names to each of the 5 columns.
John C Frain
3 Aranleigh Park
Rathfarnham
Dublin 14
Ireland
www.tcd.ie/Economics/staff/frainj/home.html
https://jcfrain.wordpress.com/
https://jcfraincv19.wordpress.com/
mailto:frainj@tcd.ie
mailto:frainj@gmail.com
On Tue, 16 Dec 2025 at 23:42, John C Frain <frainj(a)gmail.com> wrote:
If you export Brian's file as CSV there are 5 empty columns at
the end of
the series. If you put names in row 1 for each of these columns and save
your XLSX file, it can be read by Gretl. The unnamed 7th column is the
first of these columns.
John C Frain
3 Aranleigh Park
Rathfarnham
Dublin 14
Ireland
www.tcd.ie/Economics/staff/frainj/home.html
https://jcfrain.wordpress.com/
https://jcfraincv19.wordpress.com/
mailto:frainj@tcd.ie
mailto:frainj@gmail.com
On Tue, 16 Dec 2025 at 10:01, Brian Revell <bjr.newmail(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Many thanks
> One still has much to learn. Will try your suggestion to satisfy my
> curiosity re xlsx format. Might saving in the old xls format avoid the
> problem of ghost cells, though less of a general solution than the line1
> string you suggest.
> B
>
> On Tue, 16 Dec 2025, 08:23 Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti, <
> p002264(a)staff.univpm.it> wrote:
>
>> On 15/12/2025 22:35, Brian Revell wrote:
>>
>> Thanks for letting me know that. Explains why Gretl in turn was
>> confusing me. Might saving it as a CSV file have been less problematic to
>> 2025c. Though as I said, uploads of xlsx files to earlier versions of Gretl
>> have always been straightforward.
>>
>> Just for future reference, if you want to have a look at what you
>> *really* get inside an xlsx file, here's what you can do:
>>
>> 1. Rename the file and change its extension to "zip" (eg, I renamed
the
>> file you sent us to "Brian.zip")
>>
>> 2. Open the zip file with any application you want; if you're on
>> windows, I guess you might as well double-click on it
>>
>> 3. You'll see a hierarchical structure of files and folders. Go to
>> "xl/worksheets" and you'll see a file named "sheet1.xml"
>>
>> 4. You may open that file with any program that handles text. Notepad,
>> Word, whatever. However, I would suggest firefox, that handles the xml
>> format quite nicely (the absence of line breaks may be problematic
>> otherwise).
>>
>> 5. Note that each row has a "spans" attribute that tells you how many
>> non-empty columns you get. In your case, this number is 12 (I don't know
>> why)
>>
>> 6. If you navigate to row 14, you'll see that the L14 cell contains the
>> value "4", which is however marked as a shared string
(t="s"). This is
>> obviously spurious in this case and you can't expect gretl to figure out
>> that you didn't really mean to put something invisible in there.
>>
>> If you do this, you'll see clearly why the xlsx format is not really
>> ideal for storing data: some (most?) of the information it contains is
>> invisible to the naked eye, so to speak, and this may cause problems when
>> reading its contents. As you suggested, CSV is much better in that respect.
>>
>> Having said this, I'm wondering whether we can somehow handle cases like
>> this via a policy of considering as genuine data columns only the ones that
>> have a suitable string on row 1, and ignoring the rest.
>>
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------
>> Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
>> Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)
>>
>> Università Politecnica delle Marche
>> (formerly known as Università di Ancona)
>>
>> r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
>> http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti
>> -------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Gretl-users mailing list -- gretl-users(a)gretlml.univpm.it
>> To unsubscribe send an email to gretl-users-leave(a)gretlml.univpm.it
>> Website:
>> https://gretlml.univpm.it/postorius/lists/gretl-users.gretlml.univpm.it/
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Gretl-users mailing list -- gretl-users(a)gretlml.univpm.it
> To unsubscribe send an email to gretl-users-leave(a)gretlml.univpm.it
> Website:
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>
4
days inactive
6
days old
10 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
Brian Revell -
Cottrell, Allin -
John C Frain -
Marcin Błażejowski -
Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti