Hello, I am unable to get SPSS version 27 to complete many basic tasks, including simple merging , select cases, split file, or many other tasks I have done easily on other versions of SPSS. I recently got a new computer (at the same time I got a new version of SPSS), so it might be that SPSS is not communicating well with my new Mac. I have tried to troubleshoot in many different ways -- for instance, I have created files that contain only 2 variables (an index variable and one other variable, each with only 2 cases) to see if SPSS can merge those, but it can't. SPSS either shuts down immediately, giving me an error message ("an unknown error has terminated communication...") or it gets stuck running the operation and can't ever finish it. I was first having trouble with SPSS version 26 so I actually bought a new and upgraded version of SPSS (which is now version 27) to see if this would fix the problem. However, this has the same problem. These are operations I have done hundreds of times before that on other versions of SPSS that are no longer working.

Here is syntax from the error message of what just happened when I tried to select cases and it wouldn't work (and the program shut down):

System information:

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.15.5 (kernel: Darwin 19.5.0 x86_64)

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9880H CPU Support Member(16 x 2300)

Physical Memory: 16.00GB ( 0.15GB free )

Screen: [Screen: 1792 x 1120, bitsPerPixel = 24, bounds = 0.00, 0.00, 1792.00, 1120.00]

Application information:

Version: IBM SPSS Statistics 27.0

Unicode: ON

UI Language Locale: English

Output Language Locale: English

Syntax Journal:

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GET

GET FILE

DATASET NAME

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USE

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VALUE LABELS

Here is the error message I get when I try to merge data using that mock 2 variable dataset and another mock 2 variable dataset:

System information:

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.15.5 (kernel: Darwin 19.5.0 x86_64)

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9880H CPU Support Member(16 x 2300)

Physical Memory: 16.00GB ( 0.19GB free )

Screen: [Screen: 1792 x 1120, bitsPerPixel = 24, bounds = 0.00, 0.00, 1792.00, 1120.00]

Application information:

Version: IBM SPSS Statistics 27.0

Unicode: ON

UI Language Locale: English

Output Language Locale: English

Syntax Journal:

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GET FILE

DATASET NAME

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NEW FILE

DATASET NAME

NEW FILE

DATASET NAME

DATASET ACTIVATE

MATCH FILES

MATCH FILES

MATCH FILES

Please help!

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Support Member​ 

I don't see an actual error message here, but I noticed this

Physical Memory: 16.00GB ( 0.19GB free )

It appears that you have almost no free memory. With 16GB, having so little free is surprising. Statistics doesn't use a lot of memory, so check to see what might be consuming it.

I have been having the same issues and the exact same situation. Got a new computer, transferred files, and V27 was available so I downloaded that. Now I cannot even do basic tasks I was doing before. I assumed it was the new version. I still had my old computer so I tried returning to that and using V26 there, but am not getting the same error there, "an unknown error has terminated communication". Did you figure out what was going on or how to fix this problem?