in spss 27 when saving a file from menu

the option box for Encrypt file with password does not show

neither the option to drop variables

is that a question?

it is the description to the question

i cant help it but that's the way this site is organized

for some reason the question is not shown

Here is an explanation of how the passwords for operating system user profiles are encrypted at each password level:

1. For systems running at QPWDLVL of 0 or 1, the password is used as the key to encrypt a known character string, which is different for each user profile, using the DES (symmetric) algorithm. The password itself is not encrypted nor stored on the system. The data encrypted using the password as the key is what is stored on the system.

2. For systems running at QPWDLVL of 2 or 3, the password is concatenated to a known character string, which is different for each user profile, and is hashed using the SHA-1 algorithm. This is a one-way cryptographic hash algorithm. The resulting hashed value is what is stored on the system.

I expect that you are on a Mac. In V27, Statistics uses the native Mac dialogs for opening and saving files. These do not support Statistics-specific options such as selecting variables and encryption.

In order to access those features through the dialogs, you need to go to Edit > Options and choose to use the SPSS-specific open and save dialogs. That will bring those features back. Othewise, you can still use Statistics syntax for that purpose.

Thanks! That works, You've got it exactly right.