Launching the software

What after the installation?

“Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon”. Emily Dickinson

Many of you might not have started using SPSS yet. Some of you might have even stopped in the middle while not being able to know how to open it completely. Here are some tips and commonly encountered problems (with solutions).

1. Make sure that the software is licensed (trial version can also work for some period)
2. Make sure that the computer has adequate memory (newer versions of SPSS run well in 2 GB or more RAM; can work in 1 GB RAM too but it might be slow)
3. Be patient on loading time (it takes some time to open as the software is rather bulky and takes approximately 1 GB of your hard-drive space)
4. When you install SPSS, some people have problem finding shortcut icon used to launch it. In older versions of windows, the SPSS icon is visible in the start menu under all programs. However, in recent versions of windows such as “Windows 10”, you might have to search through Cortana using the keyword like “SPSS” or “IBM SPSS” which will show the icon.
5. It is easier to launch SPSS when you pin the software icon to taskbar. This can be done by right clicking the app and selecting “pin to taskbar”. We can even pin the software to taskbar after running the program and doing right click which shows the message “pin to taskbar”
6. If the taskbar is already full, you can create the desktop shortcut as well.
7. Most often, many people can’t launch the app because of corrupted installation. To solve this problem, you have to uninstall the current installation and re-install it using the appropriate procedure.
8. Sometimes, the software may not load because of excess memory usage. In that case, we might have to restart the computer to retry launching.
9. Sometimes, previous versions of SPSS installed in the same computer might cause software conflict.
10. Another reason of difficulty in loading the software is the effect of Trojans and viruses that corrupt the application. The whole computer scan using the recommended antivirus/antimalware software can solve the problems.

With these above troubleshooters, let me explain how to launch the software:

1. Click the desired icon. If the icon is in taskbar or under start menu, single click would be enough. If it is in the desktop or some other folder, double click it (same like you do for all applications). Click on “use local encoding” which might show for the first time in newer versions.
2. A dialog box will show up that will ask to open existing file or create new dataset. If we have to create new dataset, we can simply click on “new dataset” on the top left corner of the dialog box or simply press “cancel” which will help us land on the SPSS platform. 
   
3. When we click cancel, we see the following picture.
   
4. Now, we are ready to start using the features in SPSS.