After helping my GSR with a data import problem in Stata yesterday, I was reminded that the quickest and easiest solution is often to just read the file into a different program first (and the export from there, or read from there into the terminal program). In this case we read it into Excel, which correctly delimited the variables that Stata wasn't. The first Excel attempt didn't work, so we had to read it into Excel on a different computer (and later version of Excel).
This example of critical thinking and persistence in mundane tasks reminded me of a similar situation at CSR. I couldn't get my text file to read into FOCUS (our database program), so I enlisted the help of Vicky Stringfellow. We tried all known options (i.e., check column assignments in layout file, check for hidden special characters, read into Excel, etc.). Nothing worked. Finally, for some reason, reading it into SPSS worked. Still a mystery.
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