Installing Stata
Stata is a proprietary statistical software frequently used by scientific users. First, check with your local IT support whether your institution has Stata licenses available.
If not, you can purchase a copy on Stata’s website and follow the installation guide.
Making Stata Available on the Command Prompt
You have just installed Stata. Later, we’d like to access Stata from the command prompt to automatically execute our source code. That way, you will be able to run a series of scripts in batch - which will significantly ease the burden of building complex data workflows.
Windows users
For you to be able to use Stata from the command prompt, follow the steps below.
WarningMaking Stata available via an environment variable.
We need to update our environment variables.
- Right-click on Computer.
- Go to “Properties” and select the tab “Advanced System settings”.
- Choose “Environment Variables” and create a new variable, which you call
STATA_BIN. - Choose
Edit.-
Environment variable name:
STATA_BIN -
Windows 7 and 8 machines: Please check where you have installed Stata on your computer, and note the name of the Stata program file (on some machines, it is called
StataSE.exe, on others it is calledStataMP-64.exe.Then, update the path if required, and copy and paste the following string without spaces at the start or end:
c:\Program Files (x86)\Stata15\StataSE-64.exeUsing a different Stata version? Change the version number then in the path above.
-
Windows 10 machines:
- Click
Newand paste the following string:
c:\Program Files (x86)\Stata15\StataSE-64.exe- Click on
OKas often as needed.
- Click
-
Mac users
For you to be able to use Stata from the command line, you have to add Stata to your environmental variables. A tutorial follows.
WarningMaking Stata available via the PATH settings on Mac.
- Open the Terminal.
- Type
nano ~/.bash_profile. - Add Stata to the environmental variables:
- Add
export STATA_BIN=/Applications/Stata/StataMP.app/Contents/MacOS/stataMPto a new line. You may need to replace stataMP to stataSE or so, which depends on which Stata you install on Mac. - Save by pressingCtrl + Oand exit by pressingCtrl + X. - Relaunch the Terminal. Then typesource ~/.bash_profileto bring the new .bash_profile into effect. - Type
$STATA_BIN -vto check availability. Remember to type the$beforeSTATA_BIN.
Verifying the installation
To verify that Stata has been correctly installed and configured via your PATH settings, follow the instructions below.
Windows users
Open a new terminal interface and enter:
%STATA_BIN%
followed by hitting the Return key. You can check the Stata version.
WarningIf you obtain the following error:
'C:\Program' is not recognized as an internal or external command
Add " " to your variable path, for instance
"c:\Program Files (x86)\Stata15\StataSE-64.exe".
Mac users
Open a new terminal interface and enter:
echo $PATH
followed by hitting the Return key.