how to delete system missing values?

[Anter]

Hello,

I have a dataset imported from excel to spss v16, with an N=600. Below the last person entered in spss, dots appear in cells, which are treated by spss as system missing values. There were no  other numbers in cells besides the entered values for each person, but I understand that this display of dots is sometimes possible when transferring data from excel to spss. I want to delete the dots (.) in order to have no missing values at all. The simple cut and delete procedure does not work. I've also tried copying the variable properties to another data set, without including the missing values, and replacing (.) with a blank space by find - replace procedure, but none work.
Is there a way to remove these dots without recreating the data set from the beginning?

Thanks in advance,

AT.

---

Andra-Florina Toader
MA Student, www.fpse.ro
E-mail: [hidden email]
Tel.:[phone]

[Ruben Geert van den Berg]

Dear Andra,

If I understand the problem correctly, there are "empty" records below your normal ones and you'd like to remove these entire records, right? 

In that case, you could use something like

select if nvalid(v1 to v10) ne 0.

exe.

in which you can replace v1 and v10 by the names of the first and the last variables in your data.

HTH,

Ruben

---

Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2012 21:37:30 -0800
From: [hidden email]
Subject: how to delete system missing values?
To: [hidden email]

Hello,

I have a dataset imported from excel to spss v16, with an N=600. Below the last person entered in spss, dots appear in cells, which are treated by spss as system missing values. There were no  other numbers in cells besides the entered values for each person, but I understand that this display of dots is sometimes possible when transferring data from excel to spss. I want to delete the dots (.) in order to have no missing values at all. The simple cut and delete procedure does not work. I've also tried copying the variable properties to another data set, without including the missing values, and replacing (.) with a blank space by find - replace procedure, but none work.
Is there a way to remove these dots without recreating the data set from the beginning?

Thanks in advance,

AT.

---

Andra-Florina Toader
MA Student, www.fpse.ro
E-mail: [hidden email]
Tel.:[phone]

[John F Hall]

In Variable View, is it the last row?  What happens if you click on the row number (to highlight the whole row) and then try to delete? 

 

John F Hall (Mr)

 

Email:     [hidden email]

Website: www.surveyresearch.weebly.com

 

 

 

 

 

From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Andra Th
Sent: 27 November 2012 06:38
To: [hidden email]
Subject: how to delete system missing values?

 

Hello,

I have a dataset imported from excel to spss v16, with an N=600. Below the last person entered in spss, dots appear in cells, which are treated by spss as system missing values. There were no  other numbers in cells besides the entered values for each person, but I understand that this display of dots is sometimes possible when transferring data from excel to spss. I want to delete the dots (.) in order to have no missing values at all. The simple cut and delete procedure does not work. I've also tried copying the variable properties to another data set, without including the missing values, and replacing (.) with a blank space by find - replace procedure, but none work.
Is there a way to remove these dots without recreating the data set from the beginning?

Thanks in advance,

AT.

---

Andra-Florina Toader
MA Student, www.fpse.ro
E-mail: [hidden email]
Tel.:[phone]

 

[Anter]

Thank you both John and Ruben. It seems that the syntax and deleting row by row works. I've tried to delete all the rows before, but it didn't work or perhaps it took too long and I didn't wait enough (there were almost 100 rows with dots).

Well, now I have two solutions, equally valid.

AT.

--- On Tue, 11/27/12, John F Hall <[hidden email]> wrote:

From: John F Hall <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: how to delete system missing values?
To: [hidden email]
Date: Tuesday, November 27, 2012, 6:03 AM

In Variable View, is it the last row?  What happens if you click on the row number (to highlight the whole row) and then try to delete? 

 

John F Hall (Mr)

 

Email:     johnfhall@...

Website: www.surveyresearch.weebly.com

 

 

 

 

 

From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Andra Th
Sent: 27 November 2012 06:38
To: [hidden email]
Subject: how to delete system missing values?

 

Hello,

I have a dataset imported from excel to spss v16, with an N=600. Below the last person entered in spss, dots appear in cells, which are treated by spss as system missing values. There were no  other numbers in cells besides the entered values for each person, but I understand that this display of dots is sometimes possible when transferring data from excel to spss. I want to delete the dots (.) in order to have no missing values at all. The simple cut and delete procedure does not work. I've also tried copying the variable properties to another data set, without including the missing values, and replacing (.) with a blank space by find - replace procedure, but none work.
Is there a way to remove these dots without recreating the data set from the beginning?

Thanks in advance,

AT.

---

Andra-Florina Toader
MA Student, www.fpse.ro
E-mail: andra.theodor@...
Tel.:[phone]