Morning, I need to pull out specific variable names out of a very large file. They have a pattern, but it's the 'name' within spss not the rows that i need to key off of.

You can use ADD FILESs to cut your dataset down to a specified list of variables. For example,

add files /file=* /keep = salary jobcat.

If you can do the selection by specifying a regular expression, try the SPSSINC SELECT VARIABLES extension command, which you can install from the Extensions > Extension Hub menu. E.g.

SPSSINC SELECT VARIABLES MACRONAME = !age /PROPERTIES PATTERN= ".*age".

would create a macro named !age listing all the names containing "age". Then you could used that in add files:

add files /file=* /keep !age.

Using this command, you can also base selection on variable type and other metadata.

Thanks this was very helpful. It doesn't want to call the file when like this:

SPSSINC SELECT VARIABLES MACRONAME = "!name" /PROPERTIES PATTERN= ".*Percentile".

GET FILE='E:\Data\2018\File Name.sav' /keep pin !name.

But seems to do better when run like this for some reason?

GET FILE='E:\Data\2018\File Name.sav'.

SPSSINC SELECT VARIABLES MACRONAME = "!name" /PROPERTIES PATTERN= ".*Percentile".

GET FILE='E:\Data\2018\File Name.sav' /keep pin !name.

You have to have the file open in order to run SELECT VARIABLES since it uses the dictionary of the active file. However, once the file is open and you have defined the macro, you can just write

GET FILE=* /keep pin !name.

You don't need to reopen it.