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Working with output in SPSS® 16.0

This is a complimentary tip available to SPSS Direct subscribers.

Question

I recently upgraded to SPSS 16.0 and have noticed that output is treated differently in this release. I can’t open the .SPO files that I created in older releases, and Draft Viewer is no longer available. How can I work with my old output files?

Answer

SPSS 16.0 produces output files with an .SPV file extension. Unfortunately, SPSS 16.0 can’t open output generated in past SPSS releases, but you can use Legacy Viewer to open these older output files. If you use Microsoft® Windows® for your operating system, the installation CD includes a Legacy Viewer that you can install to view and edit output files created in previous releases of SPSS 16.0. You don’t need an additional license to install the Legacy Viewer.

If you would like to work with your output from SPSS 16.0 as plain text, you can export it. The “export” item on the file menu in the SPSS Output Viewer provides text output options similar to those that were found in Draft Viewer, including tab- or space-separated table output, column width control, and row and column border characters.

Finally, if you preferred Draft Viewer because it provided search-and-replace capabilities, this function is now available in Output Viewer. With Output Viewer, you can search hidden rows as well as column and non-visible layers in multidimensional pivot tables.