Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image (professional master)

Published 14 January 2010

Upgrade SPSS

Published 14 January 2010

The following message is of vital importance to users of the computer software SPSS. On 30 January, there will be an SPSS upgrade performed on all PCs in the study rooms. Output files from the old SPSS software - version 15 - will not be compatible with the upgraded SPSS - version 17.

Below you will find a more technical explanation of the consequences of this upgrade. In this way, the Central Computer Services (Informatiseringscentrum, IC) endeavours to provide a complete picture of the forthcoming migration and its resulting impact.

Reason for the Upgrade

SPSS version 15 (SPSS v15) is being phased out and will no longer be supported. Therefore, a decision has been made to upgrade to the most recent version - SPSS version 17 (SPSS v17).

Compatibility problem

Users must bear in mind that versions 15 and 17 are not automatically compatible. SPSS v17 works well with data and syntax files from previous versions, but does not work with output files from SPSS v15 or earlier.

Compatibility problem solution

IC has come up with the following solution to this compatibility problem:

A separate output viewer, LegacyViewer v15, is available for SPSS v15. Output files created in SPSS v15 or previous versions can be viewed with this program.
At the start of the second semester, all study centre PCs will be equipped with LegacyViewer, in addition to SPSS v17. Therefore, all users will be able to view old output files, although it will not be possible to edit them.

However, please note that the SPSS v15.spo extension will not be automatically supported by LegacyViewer. This will have to be configured manually in Windows via ‘Open with.'

Safeguarding output files for future use

SPSS v15 output files cannot be converted to v17 output files. There are two ways of safeguarding SPSS v15 files for future use:

Export the output file in SPSS v15 as a PDF file.

Thus, this option must be carried out before the migration to version 17 in the second semester.

Open the SPSSv15.sav data files in SPSS v17 and perform the analyses again. If the user has the syntax (.sps) of previously executed analyses then these can be used in SPSS v17 to make new output files.

Study Rooms

After the upgrade, there will still be one PC available in every study room with SPSS v15 in case of emergencies.

Source: Communications Office