How to use Stata’s PDF Manuals on a Mac

There are two ways to access the Stata manuals from your Mac. You can access the manuals directly from the Stata program if you have the Adobe PDF Reader installed. If you are unable or do not wish to install the Adobe reader the manual files can still be accessed from the Stata folder in Applications.

To install Adobe Reader, go to https://get.adobe.com/reader/: This website should automatically detect your operating system, so you simply have to click the blue install button on the left-hand side and wait for the .dmg file to download. Once it has downloaded, run the file similar to when you installed Stata on your Mac. To access the manual files once Adobe is installed, simply click the “help” tab in the top Mac bar, and then click on “PDF documentation”. You can also access help for particular commands by typing help command_name in the Stata command pane. From the help box that pops up, at the top there is a link to the full Stata PDF manual for that command. These two methods for accessing the PDF documentation from within Stata will only work if you have Adobe Reader installed.

To access the Stata manuals with Preview instead of Adobe, you can navigate to the folder that contains all the manual files. Go to your Applications > Stata > docs; all the manual PDF files are located here and can be accessed by double-clicking on each manual. Below is a list of each manual and its file name:

• adapt.pdf = Stata Adaptive Designs: Group Sequential Trials
• bayes.pdf = Stata Bayesian Analysis Reference Manual
• bma.pdf = Stata Bayesian Model Averaging Reference Manual
• causal.pdf = Stata Causal Inference and Treatment-Effects Estimation Reference Manual
• cm.pdf = Stata Choice Models Reference Manual
• d.pdf = Stata Data Management Reference Manual
• dsge.pdf = Stata Linearized Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Reference Manual
• erm.pdf = Stata Extended Regression Models Reference Manual
• fmm.pdf = Stata Finite Mixture Models Reference Manual
• fn.pdf = Stata Functions Reference Manual
• g.pdf = Stata Graphics Reference Manual
• gsm.pdf = Getting Started with Stata for Mac
• gsu.pdf = Getting Started with Stata for Unix
• gsw.pdf = Getting Started with Stata for Windows
• i.pdf = Stata Glossary and Index
• ig.pdf = Stata 15 Installation Guide
• irt.pdf = Stata Item Response Theory Reference Manual
• lasso.pdf = Stata Lasso Reference Manual
• m.pdf = Mata Reference Manual
• me.pdf = Stata Multilevel Mixed-Effects Reference Manual
• meta.pdf = Stata Meta-Analysis Reference Manual
• mi.pdf = Stata Multiple-Imputation Reference Manual
• mv.pdf = Stata Multivariate Statistics Reference Manual
• p.pdf = Stata Programming Reference Manual
• pss.pdf = Stata Power and Sample-Size Reference Manual
• r.pdf = Stata Base Reference Manual
• rpt.pdf = Stata Reporting Reference Manual
• sem.pdf = Stata Structural Equation Modeling Reference Manual
• sp.pdf = Stata Spatial Autoregressive Models Reference Manual
• st.pdf = Stata Survival Analysis Reference Manual
• stoc.pdf = Combined Subject Table of Contents
• svy.pdf = Stata Survey Data Reference Manual
• tables.pdf = Stata Customizable Tables and Collected Results Reference Manual
• ts.pdf = Stata Time-Series Reference Manual
• u.pdf = Stata User’s Guide
• xt.pdf = Stata Longitudinal-Data/Panel-Data Reference Manual

For a beginner Stata user, the following manuals are of most use to you:

• gsm.pdf = Getting Started with Stata for Mac
• u.pdf = Stata User’s Guide
• r.pdf = Stata Base Reference Manual

You can also view all the manuals on our website