Creating small tools that perform simple tasks to enhance the lives of others can be surprisingly rewarding.

Let me tell you a short encounter that led to the creation of my dta to csv repository.

[…]

Recently, a colleague of mine found herself staring at a .dta file, tasked with examining it for a law journal article she was working on. Unfortunately, she had no clue how to crack open this mysterious file format. I happened to stop by and offered to help. Admittedly, I was equally clueless about .dta files, but a quick search on DuckDuckGo informed me that it’s the data storage format used by Stata.

Now, I’m a R aficionado and have never worked with Stata. However, a faint memory surfaced from the depths of my mind – I recalled working with Stata data files through the Haven package in R a few years back.

So, I whipped up a quick R script to assist my colleague in manipulating the data. As it turned out, she only needed to read data. However, in my enthusiasm, I went back to tinker with the R markdown file. Not only did it convert .dta files to .csv, but now it automatically converted every .dta file in the script’s directory by just running the script. This way, all anyone has to do is add the files requiring conversion into the folder and run the script.

The creation process didn’t consume much time, but it undeniably made a significant difference for her. It may be that the userbase of this script is one, but, just in case there are others who don’t have the time or the technical know-how to convert .dta files to .csv, I’m glad that I put this script out in the world.

If you found this page by internet search somehow and need your .dta files converted you can find the repository here.