Rather than typing all your data directly into the Data Editor, you can read data from applications like Microsoft Excel. You can also read column headings as variable names.

From the menus choose:

File
Open
Data...

Select Excel (*.xls) from the Files of Type listbox.

Select demo.xls and click Open to read this spreadsheet.

The Opening Excel Data Source dialog box is displayed, allowing you to specify whether or not variable names are included in the spreadsheet, as well as the cells that you want to import. In Excel 5 or later, you can also specify which worksheets you want to import.

Make sure Read variable names from first row of data is checked. This option reads column headings as variable names.

If the column headings do not conform to the SPSS variable naming rules, they are converted into valid variable names and the original column headings are saved as variable labels. If you want to import only a portion of the spreadsheet, specify the range of cells to be imported in the Range field.

Click OK to read the Excel file.

The data now appear in the Data Editor, with the column headings used as variable names. If you're using a spreadsheet application other than Excel or Lotus, it should be able to export your data to a supported format that can then be read into SPSS.