 So far, we have only seen datasets that were already saved in the native SPSS file format.sav. You can open or import data from plain text files where the fields are separated or delimited by commas, tabs, semicolons or other symbols. You can import data from Excel, SAS and Stata documents and sometimes from live database connections. You should prepare your dataset carefully. The first row of the file can include the names of each variable, but only on the first row. In SPSS, use the menu File, Open Data and you will see a selection of files. Change the value for fields of type to text or something else. Here I can see a CSV file and it brings up the text import wizard. Very briefly, this lets me import my data and it's pretty good at predicting the settings. For example, it has already noticed that the file is comma separated instead of tab separated and I can name my variables. If your data has successfully finished importing, check that it has done so correctly. The number of decimal places may not be the same as you expected. You will need to add labels to your variables and value labels where numbers have been used to represent categories. It is possible to copy and paste data into a blank SPSS file too. To do this, you must prepare the destination types first, including decimal places and select value labels. Then from Excel, simply copy and in the data view in SPSS, you can paste.