Unicode mode

Starting with version 21, IBM® SPSS® Statistics operates in Unicode mode by default. If you prefer to work in code page mode, you can change the default:

• In the dialog interface: Edit>Options>Language. In the Character Encoding for Data and Syntax group, select Locale's writing system. See the topic Language options for more information.
• In command syntax: SET UNICODE=NO. See the topic UNICODE Subcommand for more information.

When opening code page IBM SPSS Statistics data files in Unicode mode or saving data files as Unicode in code page mode, defined string widths are automatically tripled. You can use ALTER TYPE to set the width of string variables to the longest value in the dataset for each string variable.

Data files saved in Unicode encoding cannot be read by versions of IBM SPSS Statistics prior to 16.0.