SPSS SAV file from Russia

[F. J. Kelley]

A faculty member has received an SPSS save file from Russia.  The Value labels and Variable labels were apparently entered in Cyrillic, but appear as odd letters and symbols.  They are unusable.  I realize this is not exactly an SPSS problem, but I thought others might have encountered something similiar (I had thought I had support for other languages, but perhaps not).
any help would be appreciated,
thanks
--Joe

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[Fry, Jonathan B.]

The SPSS release numbers matter greatly here.

If both were fairly recent (16 or later), you would see a message in the output indicating the problem.  Since you don't mention such a message, I assume either the sender's release is 14 or earlier or yours is 15 or earlier.

If yours is 15 or earlier, all you can do is put your machine in Russian using the Regional and Language Options control panel.

If yours is 16 or later, you can use SET LOCALE RUSSIAN.  Get the file and save a copy from SPSS.  I would suggest turning UNICODE on as well for any session in which you want to process that data set.

Jonathan Fry
SPSS Inc.

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of F. J. Kelley
Sent: Wednesday, September 09, 2009 4:12 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: SPSS SAV file from Russia

A faculty member has received an SPSS save file from Russia.  The Value labels and Variable labels were apparently entered in Cyrillic, but appear as odd letters and symbols.  They are unusable.  I realize this is not exactly an SPSS problem, but I thought others might have encountered something similiar (I had thought I had support for other languages, but perhaps not).
any help would be appreciated,
thanks
--Joe

=====================
To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to
[hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
command. To leave the list, send the command
SIGNOFF SPSSX-L
For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command
INFO REFCARD

=====================
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[Peck, Jon]

The solution to this varies with your SPSS version - newer ones are better, but any reasonably recent version should handle this.

If you are lucky, all you have to do is change the fonts to ones that support Russian (not necessary with 16+).  In older versions, use the fonts dialog and be sure to set the script field to Cyrillic.  Arial supports Cyrillic, so that font should be all you need.

If you are getting a lot of question marks in the text, it means that your SPSS locale setting is inconsistent with the characters in the file.  Use something like SET LOCALE=Russian and try it again.

HTH,
Jon Peck

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of F. J. Kelley
Sent: Wednesday, September 09, 2009 3:12 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [SPSSX-L] SPSS SAV file from Russia

A faculty member has received an SPSS save file from Russia.  The Value labels and Variable labels were apparently entered in Cyrillic, but appear as odd letters and symbols.  They are unusable.  I realize this is not exactly an SPSS problem, but I thought others might have encountered something similiar (I had thought I had support for other languages, but perhaps not).
any help would be appreciated,
thanks
--Joe

=====================
To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to
[hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
command. To leave the list, send the command
SIGNOFF SPSSX-L
For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command
INFO REFCARD

=====================
To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to
[hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
command. To leave the list, send the command
SIGNOFF SPSSX-L
For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command
INFO REFCARD