viewing data

Hi,

I can't seem to view my data. The file is apparently too large to view by Excel so I've tried opening it in SPSS multiple ways. I can actually open the Excel file in SPSS and it gives me all the data but only the first 8 variable names. After that, I have no idea what variables the numbers correspond to. I've also tried opening the data using the txt file and the SPSS syntax. First, I had to correct variable names so that I didn't have any duplicates. That wasn't a problem. After I fixed that, though, I got an error message:

Error # 4135 in column 11. Text: 16

"You must not specify the coumn location for variables read in FREE or LIST format."

I saw someone else had this error message and somebody suggested fixing it by deleting an space in one of her variable names. I've looked through all my variables and can't find a similar problem.

Do you have any ideas what I should do next? I would greatly appreciate your help.

Thank you.
Corrie