Technical Instructional Pages (TIPs)
for California State University Students, Staff and Faculty

Most Commonly Asked Technology Questions

How to Copy Data from Excel to SPSS

These instructions apply to all the recent versions of Excel and SPSS

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Fortunately, this is a fairly simple process. In Excel, highlight the cells that you want to transfer from Excel to SPSS.

numbers on Excel spreadsheet

2. Go to the Edit menu and choose Copy (or press the Control key and the letter C).

3. Open a new document in SPSS or bring your blank SPSS Data Editor forward.

4. Click in the upper left hand cell of the SPSS data sheet.

5. Go to the Edit menu and choose Paste (or press the Control key and the letter V).

numbers on SPSS datasheet

6. There is one other way to get your data from Excel into SPSS. While you are in SPSS, go to File and choose Open, then choose Data. In the bottom of the dialog box where it says Files of Type, choose Excel. Then navigate to your Excel file, click on it and click on Open.

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from the California State University Center for Distributed Learning (CDL).
Project Lead: Fred Fuld, CSU East Bay Concord Campus
Project Team Member: Marion Smith, CSU Dominguez Hills