Introduction to Stata 8 - (GRIPS

3.2. Handling output
Stata's output facilities are less than optimal. In this section I show how you can use the thirdparty
program NoteTab to handle output for editing and printing.
The Results window
The output immediately appears in the Results window. You may print all of the Results
window (be careful!) or a selected part of it. However, manoeuvring is more restricted than in
a text editor, and you can use only the mouse, not the keyboard, to highlight a section. You
cannot edit its contents. If you, like me, dislike the output interruptions by -more- you can:
set more off [, permanently]
The size of the Results window buffer is restricted, and you only have access to the last few
pages of output. To increase the buffer size (default 32,000 bytes) permanently:
set scrollbufsize 200000
The Viewer window
This window is excellent to examine help files, see section 4. [GSW] section 3 and 17 also
describe how to use it to examine and print output, but it is much too inflexible. The SMCLformatted
output is a mixed blessing, with parts of a table in bold, parts in plain text. And
actually only the [GSW] manual uses SMCL-formatted output, the others use plain text.
The log files and NoteTab
You may generate two log files, a full log and a command log. [GSW] section 17 tells how to
open and close log files. That didn't work well for me; I often forgot to open a log file. Now I
let the start-up file profile.do create the log files automatically, see section 1.2.
The full log (c:\tmp\stata.log) is a copy of what you saw in the Results window. I use it
to inspect, edit and print output in NoteTab. I selected plain ASCII text for the full log; it is
overwritten next time you start Stata or when you issue the newlog command.
The nt command gives you rapid access to your output in NoteTab. See appendix 3 on how
to create both commands.
The command log (c:\tmp\cmdlog.txt) includes all commands issued. It is cumulative,
i.e. new commands are added to the file, which is not overwritten next time Stata is opened.
You may use it instead of the Review window to see and recover previous commands.
Copying a table to a word processor document.
You might want to use a Stata table for publication. Copying a table directly to a word
processor document does not work well, but you may use Excel as an intermediary:
1. Highlight the table in the Results window. Right-click it and select Copy Table
2. Open Excel and paste the table to it ([Ctrl]+V). Edit the table if needed.
3. Copy-and-paste the table to your document.
To do the trick correctly, Windows must be set to display decimal periods (unless you in Stata
chose set dp comma).
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