You can paste your dialog box selections into a Syntax Editor window, where your selections appear in the form of command syntax. You can then edit the command syntax to utilize special features of SPSS not available through dialog boxes. You can open multiple syntax windows and the contents of a Syntax Editor window may be saved for later use. Text included within apostrophes or quotation marks must be contained on a single line. Each line of command syntax cannot exceed 80 characters.
Variable names ending in a period can cause errors in commands created by the dialog boxes.
You cannot create such variable names in the dialog boxes, and you should generally avoid them. Command syntax is case insensitive Menus in SPSS for Windows Many of the tasks you want to perform with SPSS start with menu selections. Each window in SPSS has its own menu bar with menu selections appropriate for that window type. Common menus File . Use the Data menu to make global changes to SPSS data files, such as transposing variables and cases, or creating subsets of cases for analysis, and merging files.