How to Download Files

 

 

PC Users

The easiest way to download the text (ASCII) data files is:

  1. Right click on the link to the data file you want (e.g., 1x1),
  2. Left click on Save Target As (Internet Explorer) or Save Link Target As (Netscape, Mozilla),
  3. Specify the directory (folder) where you want to save the text file (e.g., flper_1x1.txt), and
  4. Left click on Save.

Alternatively, if you have already opened the data file in your web browser, then:

  1. Right click from anywhere in the data file,
  2. Left click on View Source (Internet Explorer) or Open File in New Window (Netscape), which will open the file in a text editor,
  3. Left click on File on the menu bar,
  4. Left click on Save As
  5. Specify the directory where you want to save the file, and
  6. Left click on Save.

You may now open the file in a text editor (e.g., Notepad, Wordpad, Emacs), import the data into Excel (see instructions below), or read the data into a statistical package (e.g., SAS, Stata, SPSS, S-plus).

 

Opening Text Data Files in Excel

To open the data file in Excel:

  1. Left click File on the menu bar,
  2. Left click Open ,
  3. Specify files of type text file (*.prn, *.txt, *.csv ),
  4. Left click on the data file to select it, and
  5. Left click on Open .
  6. The Text Import Wizard should automatically appear. By default, Excel should select the appropriate format, so you may simply left click on Next at each step (i.e., Step 1: fixed width ; Step 2: you may change the width of columns if you like or use the default; Step 3: you may change the data format for each column or use the default) and left click on Finish to import the data.

Note: These instructions are for Excel 2002; they may differ for earlier versions of Excel (please consult your manual or on-line help menu under "import data").

 

Reading Text Data Files into a Statistical Package

Please consult your statistical package’s manual or on-line help menu for instructions on importing data in a tab-delimited ASCII (text) format. You may need to delete the first three header lines using a text editor before importing the data (so that the file contains only columns of data).