Importing transposed data

[jthodge]

I apologize if this is a question with a simple answer or has already been asked.

But I'm trying to import data from an Excel 2007 (*.xlsx) file into an Eviews 7 workfile. The data has a transposed structure (i.e. with series names in the rows of the first column instead of along the first row).

I can't find any option for the import command similar to "t" as in read(b2,t) that I used when reading older versions of Excel files.

Am I missing something simple?

[EViews Gareth]

It doesn't exist. The only way to read transposed data is with the read command, and as you point out, the read command does not support .XLSX

[tchaithonov]

How about transposing your data in Excel first?

[jthodge]

The data is transposed in Excel because we have 1500+ variables with annual data over 35 years -- otherwise we'd exceed Excel's 256 column limit.

We'll probably just convert the xlsx files to the old xls format and use the read command.

A transpose option in the import command would be a nice feature in future versions of Eviews.

[EViews Gareth]

It is actually quite tricky to do, but we get requests for it so often, we'll probably allocate some resources to it. Maybe only for Excel files though.

[tchaithonov]

The xlsx file format supports up to 65536 columns and 1048576 rows. It should be quite easy to handle a 1500+ by 35 dataset.

[jthodge]

Thanks tchaithonov.

I've been running my Excel 2007 in compatibility mode, which only has columns from A to IV (i.e. 256 columns). But when opening an .xlsx file, I now see that the columns range from A to XFD (i.e. 16,384 columns).

So no need to transpose my data anymore!