**STAT-USA/INTERNET**

**APPENDIX**

**Items in this section:**

-   **STAT-USA/Internet account types**

-   **STAT-USA/Internet file types**

-   **STAT-USA/Internet password prompt**

-   **Viewing/printing/downloading files in general**

-   **Samples and on-line help**

**[STAT-USA/Internet account types:]{.underline}**

Full access to the STAT-USA/Internet site requires a paid subscription.
There are two types of subscribers:

-   **Single designated users (SDU\'s)**: Only the person in whose name
    the account is registered is allowed to use the STAT-USA/Internet
    site. That user is authorized to use the site from anywhere (for
    example, both at work and at home). When they subscribe, SDU\'s are
    assigned a five-character userid and a five-digit password. For
    example, they may be given the userid **999xx** and the password
    **12345**. When they access a \"protected\" document, they may be
    prompted for that userid and password.

-   **Site license users:** These accounts provide access to everyone at
    a particular physical site based on their numeric Internet Protocol
    (\"IP\") address. For example, the account sponsor might have paid
    to have every machine with an IP address of **123.121.131.xxx**
    activated. When any of these users access a \"protected\" document,
    the STAT-USA/Internet system notices that they have a given machine
    address and automatically passes that user through. While these
    accounts have userid\'s, these are for accounting purposes and are
    not actually used when logging on.

**[STAT-USA/Internet file types:]{.underline}**

In general, most of the files on the STAT-USA/Internet site are ASCII
text documents. They can be viewed on the screen in your Internet
browser. They can typically be printed from your browser or cut and
pasted into software applications. (All of this is somewhat dependent on
your Internet browser.) Some files are in other formats, however.

Here are the various file formats you may find on the STAT-USA/Internet
site:

-   **Text files:** These are files that have just about any file
    extension not listed below. Frequently, the file extension will be
    TXT or a three-character acronym for the source agency (like CEN,
    FRB, BEA, TOP, etc). Text files may contain tables. If the text
    (especially tables) doesn\'t correctly line up when you import it
    into your word processor, you will want to change your default font
    to a non-proportional font. Most character fonts under Windows
    display \"M\" as a different width than \"i\". Our text files,
    however, were designed for universal display so they use fonts where
    all characters are the same width. Suggested fonts to use for these
    are Courier, Courier New, or Line Printer and select a font size
    that\'s small enough to view the text easily (try for \"9\" or
    something smaller).

-   **Self-extracting files**: These are files that have an .EXE file
    extension. Self-extracting files are usually provided when the
    regular files are very large and/or there a lot of individual files
    to be downloaded. For example, the quarterly NIPA tables consists of
    seven individual ASCII-delimited files totalling 1.2 million bytes
    but the self-extracting file (NIA.EXE) is a single file and is just
    300,000 bytes. Self-extracting files should be downloaded to a
    temporary subdirectory on your hard drive. Afterward, shell to DOS,
    go to the specified subdirectory, and type the name of the file. For
    example, if you downloaded NIA.EXE to C:\\TEMP, go to DOS, then:

> **CD \\TEMP**
>
> **NIA**
>
> This will create the seven individual files for you. You can load the
> seven files into another program; do **not** do this with the
> self-extracting file itself (NIA.EXE) though.

-   **Worksheet files**: These typically have WKS, WK1, or WK3 file
    extensions and can be loaded into any current spreadsheet program
    like Lotus 1-2-3 or Microsoft Excel.

-   **ASCII delimited files:** These typically have PRN file extensions
    although this varies. These files usually have fielded data.
    Usually, there are quotes around labels and commas or spaces between
    fields. For example, this is the first few lines of a NIPA file:

> \"T\" \"L\" \" C\"\" 1929\"\" 1930\"\" 1931\"\" 1932\"\" 1933\"\"
> 1934\"\" 1935\"\" 1936\"
>
> \"602A\" \" 1\" \"0\" 51126 46875 39782 31096 29578 34337 37383 42956
>
> \"602A\" \" 2\" \"0\" 51125 46874 39781 31095 29577 34336 37382 42955
>
> \"602A\" \" 3\" \"0\" 46004 41528 34324 25913 24220 28030 30620 34805
>
> \"602A\" \" 4\" \"0\" 1419 1291 1022 757 695 755 864 954
>
> \"602A\" \" 5\" \"0\" 1304 1181 918 673 620 682 778 871
>
> There are quotes around labels and one or more spaces between the
> values. These files can take some getting used to. You may want to
> experiment a bit with importing them into a spreadsheet program using
> different importing settings to see what works.

-   **Adobe Acrobat files:** These files have a PDF file extension and
    they must be viewed using the Adobe Acrobat reader. You can download
    the reader for free from Adobe\'s site at http://www.adobe.com

-   **Word processor files:** These typically have WP, WPD, or DOC file
    extensions although this varies.

**[STAT-USA/Internet password prompt:]{.underline}**

Unless you have a site license to access the STAT-USA site, you will get
a password prompt when you actually access a protected file on the
system. You typically will see the password prompt once a day when you
access the site.

If you have not purchased an account at STAT-USA, you can click [How to
Subscribe]{.underline} to find out how to do so. You can also select
[the Newstand]{.underline} which allows you to purchase a single report
on-line.

If you have a paid STAT-USA account, do **not** select [the
Newstand]{.underline} or you will be charged separately for information
that you\'ve already paid to access.

**[Viewing/printing/downloading files in general:]{.underline}**

Viewing, printing, and downloading files from the STAT-USA/Internet site
completely depends on the Web browser you\'re using and what operating
system it\'s running under. For these instructions, Microsoft\'s
Internet Explorer 4.0 (\"IE4\") under Windows NT is used but the process
is similar using Netscape, Mosaic, etc under Macintosh, Windows98, etc.

[Viewing]{.underline}: When an underlined document title appears, you
will typically be able to view this file just by **left-clicking** on
the underlined title. You may get a password prompt before you are
actually able to view the document.

[Printing]{.underline}: Once the document is on your screen, you can
typically print it by using the pull-down menus and selecting **File \|
Print**.

[Cutting and pasting]{.underline}: Once the document is displayed, you
can typically using the \"clipboard\" to cut and paste the text of the
document into another application (such as a word processor) by
selecting the text you want copied, copying it, switching to another
application, and pasting it in there.

> **Selecting** the text is done in a variety of ways:

-   Move the mouse cursor before the first character you want to copy.
    Press your left-mouse button down and drag your mouse over the
    entire block of text to be copied; the text will show up in reverse
    video as it is selected. Let go of the mouse button. Copy (see
    below).

-   If you want all of the text selected for copying, you can either use
    the keyboard and do **Ctrl-A** or, from the pull-down menus, select
    **Edit \| Select All**.

> **Copying**: Once selected, copying the text into the clipboard can be
> done a number of ways:

-   From the pull-down menus, select **Edit \| Copy**, or

-   From the keyboard, do **Ctrl-C**.

**Switching**: To switch to another application, do one of the
following:

-   If it\'s already opened in another window, just Alt-Tab to reach it.

-   If it\'s not already loaded, go to your desktop, or the Start
    button, or the Run prompt to load it.

> **Pasting:** Copying the text from the clipboard into an application
> is called \"pasting\". To do this, move the cursor to the location in
> your new application where you want the text to appear. Typically,
> you\'ll then do either:

-   From the pull-down menus, select **Edit \| Paste**, or

-   From the keyboard, do **Ctrl-V**.

[Downloading:]{.underline} In some cases, you\'ll have requested one of
the non-text file formats listed above (like Adobe Acrobat) and you\'ll
be prompted for how to view the file. If the file type is EXE, PDF, WK1,
WKS, WK3, or WPD, you will need to have another program handy on your
system in order to see the file. (For example, the WK? files can only be
viewed with the spreadsheet program.)

Most of the files with funny file extensions (CEN, BEA, BLS, etc) are
text files and you\'ll be able to see them using your regular Web
browser.

**Note** that when you ask to save the file to disk, your browser may
come back with a file download prompt without a default file extension.
For example, the above file (which is described in the listings as
\"Quarterly Selected NIPA Tables (ASCII format) (Self-extracting version
of NIPA.BEA)\" is a self-extracting or compressed file. It must be saved
as an EXE file in order to use it correctly.

Instead of left-clicking, you can **right-click** on the file title.
Under IE4, this results in a pull-down menu which gives you a few
choices like downloading the file to your hard drive instead of viewing
it or printing the file (which we don\'t recommend until you verify by
viewing it on your screen that it is the file you wanted). Under older
versions of Netscape, you may have to press the Shift key and then
right-click in order to get any of these choices.

**[Samples and On-Line Help:]{.underline}**

As you go through the STAT-USA/Internet site, you will periodically see
a link for **\[Samples\]** at the top of the page. Clicking this takes
you to the \"STAT-USA Knowledge Base\" page and provides you with much
of the on-line help available in the system.

You can click on \"**\[Search\]**\" to search for particular help files
or click on the various blue triangles to see what help information is
provided.