An Open (Passive-Aggressive) Letter to SPSS

Dear SPSS,

I just want to thank you.  Through your use, I have become more patient with humans, more sympathetic to other SPSS users, and more tolerant of my computer’s own delinquencies.

Thank you for being so essential in the workplace, yet being so difficult to use, decipher, and repair.  I am sure this makes me a more analytical and intelligent human being.

I appreciate your encouraging my independence by ensuring the only help I receive is via other posters on the internet desperately writing into the World Wide Abyss hoping by chance someone else a.) also had that problem, b.) was not still rocking back and forth in the fetal position, and c.) cared enough to post the solution.  Thank you for requiring a SPSS Survival Manual, SPSS for Dummies, and step-by-step books because you are too difficult to figure out by pure logic.

Thank you for preventing me from seeing the light of day.  Really, melanoma should not be taken lightly.

And finally, thank you SPSS creators, for ensuring that everyone who has not used your program will not possibly understand the difficulties and inexplicable behaviour which your program guarantees, thereby increasing our opportunities to develop ridiculously complicated work-arounds just to “find a way to get it done”.  This, I’m sure, has made me more in touch with my creative side.  I also have to wash less of my hair.

In all, thank you SPSS, for making me a better human being.  Now, with all due respect, please interpret my passive-aggressive letter as an upwardly-aimed central manual appendage displayed in your general direction.


Custom Tables in SPSS

Hi all, Ms. Compy Fix-It here to ask for some assistance.

When creating a Custom Table, I would like to select a variable for the column, Column N %, and a question for the rows.  Such a seemingly simple task works for other users, but when I run it, it stays at “Processing” eternally.  One difference I had compaired to someone whose SPSS was working properly, was that when I select Column N % in the Summary Statistics segment, he had the option “Apply to All” available, whereas mine is greyed out.


Any ideas?

Solution for “SPSS Error Code 2063 Getting Data”

Hello all.



/SHEET=name ‘RawData’
>Error.  Command name: GET DATA
>(2063) Error reading information for sheet.
>* Sheet Name: “RawData”
>This command not executed.


The More You Know…..  😉