When I have item names that are greater than 8 characters, I run into an issue when I open the data in SPSS: it renames the variable name to VAR0001, VAR0002, etc when I look at the data in Data View. The item names are still there in Variable View, but are listed in the Label column. I have no problem copying the names from the Label column into the Variable column (i.e. it isn't an issue with SPSS having a defined variable length of 8 characters or less). Is there any way to stop longer item names from being renamed as VAR... when you view data in SPSS?