Appendix A.

Global Options

EViews employs user-specified default settings in many operations. You may, for example,
set defaults for everything from how to perform frequency conversion between workfile
pages of different frequency, to which font to use in table output, to line color and thickness
in graphs, to how to compute derivatives in nonlinear estimation routines.

These default options may, of course, be overridden when actually performing an operation.
For example, you may have specified a default conversion of data from monthly to quarterly
data by averaging observations, but may choose to use summing when performing a specific
conversion. Similarly, you may instruct EViews to use the color red for the first line in newly
created graphs, and then change the color in a specific graph.

The Options Menu

The Options menu in the main toolbar allows you to

define the default behavior for many of the operations in
EViews. Most options are found within the General
Options... and Graphics Defaults... menu items.

General Options
When you click the General Options... menu item, EViews brings up the Global Options
dialog. This dialog is broken up into many sections which are accessible using the tree on
the left-hand side of the dialog. We discuss briefly the options within each of these sections.
In some cases, additional detail is provided in the corresponding sections of the manual.

Startup
The startup section controls the display of the startup page, and the handling of messages.
812—Appendix A. Global Options

Environment Appearance
EViews provides a number of color themes to modify the appearance of your EViews envi-
ronment.

In the Window colors

groupbox, you may
select from a variety of
basic themes, includ-
ing Light Blue, Silver,
and EViews Classic.
You can completely
customize the color by
selecting Custom.

You can let the back-

ground and status bar
follow this color
theme, or choose a dif-
ferent color from the
Background & status
bar dropdown.

Not surprisingly, the Caption bar & borders dropdown may be used to choose the visual
style of your caption bar and borders. The Default setting is for EViews to draw the caption
bars and borders using colors in a style to match your operating system (either Windows XP
or Windows Vista/Windows 7). You may instead choose EViews rounded or Vista style to
have EViews choose a style independent of your operating system. If you have modified
 The Options Menu—813

your operating system settings for window borders and text, and wish to have the operating
system draw the caption and borders, you should select Operating system drawn.

Most windows in EViews have a row of buttons along the top, called the button bar. To hide
these buttons on all windows, uncheck Display button bars on the top right of the dialog.

Window Behavior
The Window behavior page controls the display characteristics of various types of EViews
output.

The settings are divided into broad groupings:

• The Warn On Close section in the upper left-hand corner of the dialog instructs
EViews to provide a warning message when you close an untitled object. You may
choose to set warnings for various object types. By default, EViews warns you that
closing an unnamed object without naming it will cause the object to be deleted.
Along with the warning, you will be given an opportunity to name the object. If you
turn the warning off, closing an untitled window will automatically delete the object.
• Allow Only One Untitled specifies, for each object type, whether to allow multiple
untitled objects to be opened at the same time. If only one is allowed, creating a new
untitled object will cause any existing untitled object of that type to be deleted auto-
matically. Setting EViews to allow only one untitled object reduces the number of
windows that you will see on your desktop.
If you elect to allow only one untitled object, we strongly recommend that you select
Warn on Close. With this option set, you will be given the opportunity to name and
save an existing untitled object, otherwise the object will simply be deleted.
814—Appendix A. Global Options

• File open on double click controls the whether to use an existing EViews session or
to launch an additional session when opening an EViews associated file. Selecting
Open in existing EViews session (when possible) means that when using Windows
to open an EViews file, say by double clicking, selecting an EViews file from the start
menu, or opening as an email attachment, the file will open in an already running
copy of EViews, if available.
• Run program on EViews startup determines the behavior of EViews when launching
the program by double clicking on a program file in a Windows directory. By default
EViews, will open and run the program when you double click. Unselect this check-
box to prevent the program from being run automatically. Note that if EViews is
already running when the program file is double-clicked, EViews will only open the
file, regardless of this setting. This setting only applies when a new instance of
EViews is launched to handle the program file.

Keyboard
The Keyboard page offers options for setting focus and for smart editing.

• Keyboard Focus controls where the keyboard cursor is placed when you change
views or windows. As the label suggests, when you select Command Window, the
keyboard focus will go to the command window following a change of view. This set-
ting is most useful if you primarily use EViews via the command line. Choosing
Active Window will cause the focus to go to the active window following a change of
view. You will find this setting useful if you wish to use keystrokes to navigate
between and to select items in various windows. Note that whatever the default set-
ting, you may always change the keyboard focus by clicking in the command window,
or by clicking in the active window.
 The Options Menu—815

• Smart edit allows you to turn off the automatic pop-up that displays possible entries
in edit fields. If Both automatically and on demand is selected, the list will be pre-
sented, after a pause in typing, from within most edit fields except the command win-
dow. If Only on demand via Ctl+L is selected, you can use the keystroke, as always,
to bring up the list of entries.
• You may change the delay used when automatic pop-ups are enabled, by entering the
desired number of milliseconds in the appropriate edit field.

Fonts
The Fonts section allows you to change the default font styles and sizes for various sets of
windows and objects. Select the type of object for which you want to change the font from
the dropdown at the top of the dialog and modify the font settings below. For example, to set
the default font face and size to be used in table objects and table views of objects, select
Spreadsheets & Table defaults and modify the settings below the dropdown.

Command Capture
The Capture to Command Window setting determines whether or not to echo the contents
of the command capture to the command window. If the checkbox is not selected, the com-
mand capture will only be written to the capture window.

Frequency Conversion
The Frequency conversion dialog within the Series and Alphas section allows you to set
the default frequency conversion methods for both up and down conversion, and the default
method of displaying dates.
816—Appendix A. Global Options

The default frequency

conversion method tells
EViews how to convert
data when you move
data to lower or higher
frequency workfiles.
The frequency conver-
sion methods and use
of default settings are
discussed in detail in
“Reading EViews Data
using Other Applica-
tions,” beginning on
page 152.

Series Auto Labels

You may elect to have EViews keep a history of the commands that created or modified a
series as part of the series label. You can choose to turn this option on or off in the History
in labels dialog within the Series and Alphas section.

Note that the series label may be viewed by selecting View/Label in a series window, or at
the top of a series spreadsheet if the spreadsheet defaults are set to display labels (“Spread-
sheet Layout” on page 818).

Auto-series
In the Auto-series page under Series and Alphas, the Alpha-series in stats option lets you
control whether EViews simply ignores evaluation errors in auto-series when performing
statistical analysis, or reports an error. Auto-series are functions or expressions of existing
workfile series that may be used in a statistical procedure.

For example, the auto-series LOG(X) may be used as a regressor in an equation object, or as
one of the series used in a cointegration test. When the option is set to Report evaluation
errors in statistical views and procs, if the auto-series cannot be evaluated for any observa-
tion (for example, any observation where X is negative when using LOG(X)), EViews will
error and, possibly, stop computation of the statistical procedure. If the option is set to Treat
evaluation errors as NAs, any observation that cannot be evaluated will simply be con-
verted into an NA and the statistical computation will continue, usually ignoring that obser-
vation.
 The Options Menu—817

History in Labels
You may set the default for whether or not to save the command history in the series labels.

Auto-series
You may choose whether or not to treat evaluation errors in auto-series as missing (NA) val-
ues, or whether to report an error when an evaluation error is encountered.

Alpha Truncation
Note that EViews alpha series automatically resize as needed, up to the truncation length.

To modify the alpha series truncation length, select Alpha Truncation from the Series and
Alphas section, and enter the desired length. Subsequent alpha series creation and assign-
ment will use the new truncation length.
818—Appendix A. Global Options

You should bear in

mind that the
strings in EViews
alpha series are of
fixed length, so that
the size of each
observation is
equal to the length
of the longest
string. If you have a
series with all short
strings, with the
exception of one
very long string, the
memory taken up
by the series will be
the number of observations times the longest string size.

The maximum string length is 1,000 characters.

Spreadsheet Layout
The options in the Layout dialog within the Spreadsheets section control the default spread-
sheet view settings of series, group, and table objects. The defaults are set using these
option settings when the object is first created.

In the Series
spreadsheets por-
tion of the dialog,
you may set the dis-
play format and
choose to display
the spreadsheet in
one or multiple col-
umns, with or with-
out object labels
and header informa-
tion. In addition,
you may choose to
have edit mode
turned on or off by
default.
 The Options Menu—819

Below this section are the Group spreadsheet options for sample filtering, transposed dis-
play, and edit mode.

Frozen tables allows you to modify whether edit mode is on or off by default.

You may set the Spreadsheet display order to ascending or descending from the dropdown
in the upper-right corner of the dialog.

Spreadsheet Data Display

The Data display dialog within the Spreadsheets section provides other default settings that
apply to new numeric and text spreadsheets.

The Data displayed as

dropdown menu, in the
Numeric display por-
tion of the dialog, deter-
mines what type of data
the rest of the section
refers to. You can spec-
ify a display format for
each of the transform
types specified in the
dropdown menu (Level
& Difference, %
Change & Log Dif, or
Logarithm). For
instance, if you select
Level & Difference, you can alter the numeric formatting of cells, set the number of digits to
be displayed, as well as specify the characters used as separators and indicators for negative
numbers, for data displayed using this transform method. To set the default display for other
transform types, you may change the Data displayed as dropdown menu.

You may also choose the default Text justification and Indentation for alphanumeric dis-
play.

We emphasize the fact that these display options only apply to newly created series or group
objects. If you subsequently alter the defaults, existing objects will continue to use their own
settings.

Table Options
The table options section contains options for copying tables.
820—Appendix A. Global Options

You may, by default, copy in text, LaTex or HTML formats. Number may be copied as
depicted, or at highest resolution. Table headers may be copied or not, and you may show or
suppress the copy options dialog each time you perform a copy.

Workfile Storage Defaults

The Workfile Save dialog in the Data storage section allows you to specify storage precision
and compression options for your saved workfiles, and to specify whether to create backup
workfiles when overwriting existing files on disk.

The Series storage

portion of the dia-
log controls
whether series data
are stored in saved
workfiles in single
or double precision.
Note that workfiles
saved in single pre-
cision will be con-
verted to double
precision when
they are loaded into
memory.

In addition, you
may elect to save
 The Options Menu—821

your workfiles in compressed format on disk by checking the Use compression setting. Note
that compressed files are not readable by versions of EViews prior to 5.0, and that they do
not save memory when using the workfile, as it is uncompressed when loaded into memory.
Compressed workfiles do, however, save disk space.

You should uncheck the Prompt on each Save checkbox to suppress the workfile save dia-
log on each workfile save.

In addition, you may specify whether EViews should keep backup copies of workfiles when
saving over an existing file. If selected, the automatic backup copy will have the same name
as the file, but with the first character in the extension changed to “~”.

Database Storage Defaults

You may also con-
trol the default
behavior of EViews
when moving data
into and out of
databases using the
Database Store
and Database
Fetch dialogs
within the Data
storage section.
These dialogs con-
trol the behavior of
group store and
fetch (see “Storing
a Group Object”
and “Fetching a Group Object” on page 317), and whether data are stored to databases in
single or double precision.
822—Appendix A. Global Options

Date Representation
The Date represen-
tation dialog con-
trols the format for
dates in sample
processing, and in
workfile and vari-
ous object views.
For daily and
weekly data, you
can set the default
to American
(Month/Day/Year)
or you may switch
to European nota-
tion (Day/Month/
Year), where the
day precedes the month. You may also specify your quarterly or monthly date display to use
the Colon delimiter or a Frequency delimiter character based on the workfile frequency
(“q” or “m”). The latter has the advantage of displaying dates using an informative delimiter
(“1990q1” vs. “1990:1”).

See also “Free-format Conversion Details” on page 114 in the Command and Programming
Reference for related discussion.

Estimation Defaults
You can set the
global defaults for
the maximum
number of itera-
tions, convergence
criterion, and
methods for com-
puting derivatives
in the Estimation
options dialog.

These settings will

be used as the
default settings in
iterative estima-
tion methods for
 The Options Menu—823

equation, log likelihood, state space, and system objects. Note that previously estimated
EViews objects that were estimated with the previous default settings will be unchanged,
unless reestimated. See “Setting Estimation Options” on page 1005 for additional details.

When the Display settings option is checked, EViews will produce additional output in the
estimation output describing the settings under which estimation was performed.

Programs
The first page of
the Programs sec-
tion provides some
general options for
running EViews
programs. You can
stop a program
from running after
exceeding a speci-
fied number of
errors by entering
the error count in
Maximum allow-
able errors before
halting.

You may also use this dialog to specify whether EViews should keep backup copies of pro-
gram files when saving over an existing file. The backup copy will have the same name as
the file, but with the first character in the extension changed to “~”.

If the checkbox labeled Version 4 compatible variable substitution is selected, EViews will
use the variable substitution behavior found in EViews 4 and earlier versions. EViews 5
changed the way that substitution variables are evaluated in expressions. You may use this
checkbox to use Version 4 substitution rules. See “Version 4 Compatibility Notes” on
page 169 for additional discussion.

In addition, you may modify the Display Settings to change the display of text and editing
behavior in program files.

If Use syntax coloring is selected, basic programming keywords, strings, and comments will
be displayed in color. You may also Enable word wrap and Display line numbers in pro-
grams.

The two controls on the right-hand side determine auto-indenting and tab size settings. The
Tab size (in spaces) edit box lets you set how many characters a tab will use in the program
editor. The Indent dropdown lets you specify the type of automatic indenting that the pro-
824—Appendix A. Global Options

gram editor will use. Auto on means that EViews will attempt to automatically apply a sin-
gle tab for lines of code that are inside a program statement (“For/Next”, “If/Endif”,
“While/Wend”), or inside a subroutine. Note that the single tab will be applied on top of
any tabbing that was already in place. Auto on w/completion means that EViews will apply
automatic indenting, and will also automatically close any program statement. For example,
EViews will automatically add “Next” to the start of the next line when you finish a line
starting with “For”. Auto off means no automatic indenting will be employed.

The Runtime settings

dialog in the Programs
section specifies
whether, by default,
EViews runs programs
in Verbose mode, list-
ing commands in the
status line as they are
executed, or whether it
uses Quiet mode,
which suppresses this
information. EViews
will run faster in quiet
mode since the status
line display does not
need to be updated.

This default may always be overridden from the Run Program dialog, or by using the option
“q” in the run statement, as in:
run(q) myprogram

For details, see “Executing a Program,” beginning on page 120 of the Command and Pro-
gramming Reference.
 The Options Menu—825

PDF Page Settings

The PDF page set-
tings dialog deter-
mines default
settings when you
export an object as
a PDF (Portable
Document For-
mat). You may set
the Paper to a pre-
set type and size,
or determine your
own. You may also
set the default Ori-
entation and Mar-
gins for your PDF
output.

LaTex Settings
The LaTex settings section controls the default output of tables in LaTex as either tables, or
images embedded in LaTeX commands. In addition, you can specify a directory in which the
images should be stored, and instruct EViews to put the LaTeX input command on the clip-
board so it may easily be used in your documents. You may also set the default for whether
or not to include a full LaTeX document specification in your output.
826—Appendix A. Global Options

External Program Interface

The External pro-
gram interface
entry allows you to
specify the default
case to use when
creating destina-
tion objects in
MATLAB or R
using the xput
command. The
defaults may be
overridden by
specifying the
“case=lower” or
“case=upper”
option in the
xopen command or by specifying an explicit destination name using the “name=” option in
the xput command.

You may also use the COM ProgID section of the dialog to specify the default Programmatic
IDs (ProgIDs) used when instantiating a MATLAB or R COM server. The ProgID is used to
indicate the version of MATLAB or statconnDCOM to which EViews connects when you
issue an xopen command. Each dropdown will contain values found in the Windows regis-
 The Options Menu—827

try on your system that were entered when you installed MATLAB and statconnDCOM. You
may choose from entries in the dropdowns, or type in a specific ProgID for EViews to use
when opening a MATLAB or R session. The default settings may be overridden by specifying
“progid=” in the xopen command.

For details on these settings see xopen (p. 538) and xput (p. 540) in the Command and Pro-
gramming Reference.

Network Proxy Server

Some EViews fea-
tures (such as
automatic update,
registration)
require internet
access. If internet
access is only
available on your
network via a
proxy server, you
may provide
EViews will your
proxy server set-
tings.

Simply click on
Network proxy
server to display the relevant dialog and enter your settings. You may click on the Auto
detect button to have EViews try to determine your settings for you. Note that valid proxy
server setting values generally take the form:
servername:8080

where servername represents the name (or IP address) of the proxy server and 8080 is
replaced by the actual port number be employed.

If Microsoft Internet Explorer has previously setup properly with a proxy server on the cur-
rent machine, you can click the Auto detect from IE button to import the current settings
into EViews.

EViews is only concerned with HTTP and HTTPS access. For a single proxy server that sup-
ports both protocols, enter the server name and port number into the HTTP edit field.

If a different server is used for HTTPS, uncheck the Use the same proxy server checkbox
and enter the server name and port number into the HTTPS edit field.
828—Appendix A. Global Options

For a proxy server that requires username/password authentication, enter the information
into the Proxy Authentication fields.

Click the Test Internet Access button to test these settings on your local network.

File Locations
This selection
allows you to set
the default working
directory, and the
locations of the
.INI file, database
registry and alias
map, and the temp
directory.

The dialog also

reports, but does
not allow you to
alter, the location
of your EViews
executable.

Note that the default working directory may also be changed via the File Open and File
Save or File Save As dialogs, or by using the cd command.

Advanced System Options

You may use the
Advanced system
options dialog to
set memory alloca-
tion and expression
evaluation options.
Unless there is a
specific reason for
changing settings,
we strongly recom-
mend that you use
the default EViews
settings.
 The Options Menu—829

Memory Allocation
The top portion of the dialog allows you to adjust the EViews memory allocation settings.

By default, for 32-bit machines, EViews allows a maximum of 4 million observations per
series. You may use the dropdown menu to increase or decrease this limit. If you using the
64-bit version of EViews, this control will not appear, and you will be limited to 120 million
observations per series.

The total memory available for all EViews objects is limited by the maximum address space
per application. Standard Windows XP systems allow for 2GB of address space, but may be
configured to use 3GB (using the /3GB switch). Windows XP x64 systems allow for 4GB of
address space per application. The amount of available address space in 64-bit versions of
Windows will depend on the specific version. Note that if the amount of physical memory
available is less than the address space in use, available disk space will be used as virtual
memory, which will significantly degrade performance.

EViews reserves a portion of this address space for auxiliary purposes. This memory is used
by the operating system, DLLs, external database drivers, and by EViews when creating
objects. Reducing the size of the reserved space will increase the amount of address space
available for holding observations, but will decrease the total number of objects allowed in
EViews, and may lead to instability caused by out-of-memory conditions.

By default, EViews increases the speed of evaluation by first compiling expressions to

machine code. The pre-compiled code executes more rapidly, but the compilation procedure
and evaluation requires additional memory. You may uncheck this setting to use the slower,
memory efficient method of evaluation.

Multi-Processor Use
The Multi-processor/Multi-core use section may be used to define the maximum number
of threads you would like to allow EViews to use when processing statistical calculations.
EViews treats processors and cores symmetrically, and does not include hyper-threaded pro-
cessors. In general, we recommend leaving this setting at Auto.

When set to Auto, EViews detects the number of cores in your system and attempts to use
all of them. You may override this setting for up to eight threads. This allows you to increase
the number of threads EViews uses to beyond the physical number of cores. We have not
found this to be effective, but, in principle, it could improve performance with hyper-thread-
ing. If you require more processing power for other applications, you may wish to limit the
number of threads EViews uses by setting this number below the physical number of cores.
This is guaranteed to work with Intel processors, and, to our knowledge, should work with
other brands of processors as well.

You may click on the Reset to EViews Defaults button to return to the default settings.
830—Appendix A. Global Options

Graphics Defaults
These options control how a graph appears when it is first created. The great majority of
these options are explained in considerable detail in “Graph Options,” beginning on
page 720.

Additional dialog pages are provided for specifying the default settings for use when saving
graphs to file (Exporting) and for handling sample breaks, missing values, and panel data
structures (Samples & Panel Data).

Default settings for color and background transparency may be set in the Frame & Size/
Color & Border entry of the Graph Options dialog.

The Quick fonts section lets you set multiple graph font settings all at once. You can change
the font face, style and size for all axes, legends, text objects and observation labels in a sin-
gle step.

See “Basic Customization,” beginning on page 602 and Chapter 15. “Graph Objects,” on
page 703.

Database Registry
The Database Registry settings are described in detail in “The Database Registry” on
page 319.

Cloud Management
The Cloud Management settings are described in “Cloud Drive Support” on page 92.
 Print Setup—831

EViews Auto-Update from Web

IHS Global Inc. occasionally releases patches to the EViews program, and we strongly rec-
ommend that you keep your copy of EViews as up-to-date as possible.

EViews includes an auto-

matic updating feature
that can check for new
updates automatically,
and install any update
that may be available.
The automatic update
feature can be disabled
from the Options/EViews
Auto-Update from Web item in your main EViews menu. You can also manually check for
updates from within EViews at any time by selecting Check now... under the EViews Auto-
Update from Web menu item, or by selecting EViews Update from the Help menu.

You may also check for updates to the EViews program or for updates to supplementary
components such as the EViews documentation or sample data and programs, by visiting
the Download section of the EViews website (www.eviews.com).

Print Setup
The Print Setup options (File/Print Setup... on the main menu) determine the default print
behavior when you print an object view.

The top of the Print Setup dialog provides you with choices for the destination of printed
output.