If you just starting to learn SPSS, read Working with the SPSS Viewer (essentials) instead.

The Viewer window has his own menu and toolbars. The window itself is divided into two parts: The left-hand side shows a tree structured outline(list) of the output elements shown in the right hand part, i.e. a structured table of contents.

Each SPSS command produces a set of output elements (called ) that are grouped hierarchically; a yellow icon in the outline identifies the command and a level below you will find the various frames it has produced. (The tool lets you go quickly to the Last output produced).

All statistical commands will produce a Title, a Notes (technical notes on the current command) frame and an Active Dataset frame (Contains the name of the dataset used). Most commands add a frame about the number of observations included into analysis (often labelled Case processing summary), in the example here Statistics, as well as the specific frames for the command, i.e. results, tables, graphs ....

In addition to making browsing your output easier by giving you are structured view of your output that can be used for navigation, the outline part the screen is used to actually manage your output.

Note that the various actions affect the selected element, as well as its children (the elements that are hierarchically below it).

• Frames (elements) that you do not want to see in the output, can be hidden (by default the "Notes" section is hidden (double-click it to make it visible in the output section). The icons shown reflect the visible/hidden status of a frame.
• A frames (element) can be manipulated naturally (as any "object" in a modern computing environment) using mouse, keyboard and toolbar buttons when available.
  • Delete it by hitting the DEL key or use if you prefer, or it from the context menu
  • Rename by clicking inside a label in the outline and typing in a new label.
  • Drag and drop it somewhere else with the mouse.
  • Cut and paste it.
  • All in all it is rather intuitive, much easier to do than to explain.
• You can modify the hierarchical position of an element and its children by using the (Promote) or (demote) tools (or using either from the or context menu
• You can insert new elements: new headings (), new titles ()and new text (). The same can be achieved with the menu, where also find an option to insert text files and elements useful for printing.

All frames can be edited; there are different types of output frames: titles, simple text output, tables and graphs, and depending upon the type of frame, different editors are called, namely the , the for charts, as well as the for simple text like headings and logs.

• Viewer windows can be saved for later use; just use to write the content of a window to a file and late use to view it again.
• You can open several at the same, use to do so ( between windows is easy). When you have two or more Viewer Windows open, the new output will go to the last window opened. If you want to direct output to another of the windows, you should click on which appears on all Viewer Windows where the output is NOT directed to; you can also use to do so.
• Printing output
  • On the print dialog, choose to print All visible output or Selected output. "Visible" means all visible frames in the window, i.e. you can simply hide frames that you do not want to be printed. Make sure to understand that "selected" means the selected frame(s), i.e. if you the current selection is only a title (in the example above "Graph" is a title frame) you will get only a single word printed...
  • As tables can be become quite big, they might print on several pages which is not always what you want. Before printing it is highly recommended to use
  • The menu has options for inserting and removing page breaks and add page titles.
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• The full content of a viewer window ( or individual frames ( from the context menu) can be exported into various formats (html, PDF, Word (RTF), Power Point, Excel, etc. )

• SPSS objects (tables, graphs etc) can be embedded in other applications, e.g. Microsoft Word.
• SPSS distributes also a standalone viewer that lets you send your tables and charts to others who do not have SPSS, giving access to all facilities described here. There is also a free, simple viewer that lets you view SPSS Viewer files (but does not offer full manipulation facilities).
• The can be used to open/close/change and export viewer files using command language.

• Edit text frames (tables)
• Edit charts
• Edit simple text frames like logs, titles and notes.
• Export output and tables to other software.