massdesas

Version 1.0.0 | 2026-04-08

massdesas recursively scans a directory tree for .sas7bdat files, imports each one into Stata, and writes a sibling .dta file with the same base name. It is meant for project folders with many SAS datasets where one-at-a-time conversion would be slow and error-prone.

Requirements

• Stata 14 or later
• Stata's built-in import sas
• filelist from SSC
• fs from SSC

Installation

capture ado uninstall massdesas
net install massdesas, from("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tpcopeland/Stata-Tools/main/massdesas") replace

Install the SSC dependencies once if they are not already available:

ssc install filelist
ssc install fs

Commands

Command	Description
massdesas	Recursively convert .sas7bdat files to .dta files

Quick Start

If your current working directory already contains SAS files somewhere under it, this is enough:

massdesas

If the source files live somewhere else and you want imported variable names standardized to lowercase:

massdesas, directory("/path/to/sas_files") lower

How It Works

• If directory() is omitted, massdesas uses the current working directory.
• The command searches that root and all subdirectories for files matching *.sas7bdat.
• Each matching file is imported with import sas and saved as a .dta in the same folder.
• lower passes case(lower) to import sas, which converts imported variable names to lowercase.
• erase deletes the original .sas7bdat file only after a successful conversion.

Worked Examples

1. Convert an entire project tree

massdesas, directory("/project/raw/sas_files")

This recurses through /project/raw/sas_files, converts every .sas7bdat file it finds, and leaves the .dta files beside the SAS sources.

2. Convert and normalize variable names to lowercase

massdesas, directory("/project/raw/sas_files") lower

Use this when the source files have mixed-case variable names and you want Stata-style lowercase names throughout the converted outputs.

3. Test before erasing the originals

massdesas, directory("/project/backup_sas_files") lower
use "/project/backup_sas_files/example_file.dta", clear
describe
massdesas, directory("/project/raw/sas_files") lower erase

erase only removes a .sas7bdat file after a successful .dta save, but the deletion is still permanent, so it is best used after you validate a backup or staging copy.

Notes and Limitations

• File pattern matching is case-sensitive on Linux and macOS, so .SAS7BDAT files are not found by the default *.sas7bdat search.
• Filenames containing spaces are not supported.
• If a file fails to convert, massdesas reports the failure and continues with the remaining files.
• If a converted file contains zero observations, the command reports that fact and still saves the .dta.

Version History

• 1.0.0 (2026-04-08): Initial Stata-Tools release

Author

Timothy P Copeland, Karolinska Institutet