Stata.Document

PQDriverless

Not part of the Power Query standard library. This function ships in PQDriverless, an open-source package of pure M readers for binary file formats — no ODBC driver, no OLE DB provider, nothing to install. Paste the M source into a blank query, or load PQDriverless.mez as a custom connector. See Installing.

Returns the observations, dictionary and value labels of a Stata dataset (.dta).

Syntax

Stata.Document(
    source as binary,
    optional options as record
) as table

Remarks

Like SPSS, the usual routes into a .dta file are Stata itself or the R/Python script host. This function decodes the dataset format directly, across every release from Stata 8 to Stata 19.

The result is a navigation table with three rows:

Name	Contents
Data	one row per observation
Variables	the data dictionary — name, label, storage type, display format
ValueLabels	variable, value, label

Options:

• ApplyValueLabels : A logical (true/false). Replace coded values with their value labels in Data; unlabeled values pass through, and a labeled extended missing shows its label (default is false).
• ExtendedMissingToText : A logical (true/false). The extended missing codes .a-.z become the texts ".a"-".z" instead of null (default is false). System missing (.) is always null.
• Encoding : A TextEncoding.Type or codepage number for all text, overriding the default — UTF-8 for formats 118 and 119, Windows-1252 for the older ASCII-era formats.
• MaxRows : A number. Stop after this many observations.
• Strict : A logical (true/false). When true, tolerated malformations become errors — a strL pointer with no backing GSO, or a truncated value-label trailer (default is false).

Examples

Example #1

Read the observations.

let
    Doc  = Stata.Document(File.Contents("C:\data\survey.dta")),
    Data = Doc{[Name = "Data"]}[Data]
in
    Data

Example #2

Keep Stata's extended missing codes as something you can act on. A dataset that distinguishes "refused" from "not applicable" encodes both as missing, and collapsing them to null throws that away.

let
    Doc = Stata.Document(
        File.Contents("C:\data\survey.dta"),
        [ExtendedMissingToText = true]
    )
in
    Doc{[Name = "Data"]}[Data]

Supported

Formats 113, 114, 115 (Stata 8-12), 117 (Stata 13), 118 (Stata 14-19) and 119 (Stata 15-19, over 32,767 variables); both byte orders (LSF and MSF); all five numeric storage types with the Stata missing codes (., .a-.z, encoded at the top of each numeric range); str# and strL variables including cross-linked, empty and binary GSOs; value labels including labels on extended missing codes; variable labels; dataset label and timestamp; sort order; %td/%tc/%tC/%tm/%tq/%th/%tw formats decoded to M date/datetime against the Stata epoch of 1960-01-01; characteristics and expansion fields skipped structurally.

Not supported

• Formats written by Stata 7 or older — clear error.
• Formats 120/121 (alias variables, Stata 18+) — clear error.
• %tC values are decoded like %tc, so leap seconds are not subtracted.
• %tb business-calendar and %ty year values stay numeric.

Metadata

Stata.Release, Stata.ByteOrder, Stata.DatasetLabel, Stata.Timestamp, Stata.ObservationCount, Stata.VariableCount, Stata.SortedBy, Stata.Encoding.

Category

Driverless connectors