I have a very large number of stata .dta file version 69 files that I need to convert into .csv or some other excel readable format. I should note that I only know how to get the version number from the pandas error message, but opening it as a text file shows something very different from a modern stata 118 file so I suspect that it isn’t just an issue of the version number getting misencoded.

Methods tried so far (file type not supported)
-Python pandas library
-R foreign library
-R rio library

Here is my pandas code:

import pandas as pd

data = pd.read_stata('3-charge.DTA')
data.to_csv('3-charge.csv')

And the stacktrace:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
Cell In[5], line 3
      1 import pandas as pd
----> 3 data = pd.read_stata('3-charge.DTA')
      4 data.to_csv('3-charge.csv')

File ~anaconda3Libsite-packagespandasiostata.py:2150, in read_stata(filepath_or_buffer, convert_dates, convert_categoricals, index_col, convert_missing, preserve_dtypes, columns, order_categoricals, chunksize, iterator, compression, storage_options)
   2147     return reader
   2149 with reader:
-> 2150     return reader.read()

File ~anaconda3Libsite-packagespandasiostata.py:1708, in StataReader.read(self, nrows, convert_dates, convert_categoricals, index_col, convert_missing, preserve_dtypes, columns, order_categoricals)
   1696 @Appender(_read_method_doc)
   1697 def read(
   1698     self,
   (...)
   1706     order_categoricals: bool | None = None,
   1707 ) -> DataFrame:
-> 1708     self._ensure_open()
   1710     # Handle options
   1711     if convert_dates is None:

File ~anaconda3Libsite-packagespandasiostata.py:1182, in StataReader._ensure_open(self)
   1178 """
   1179 Ensure the file has been opened and its header data read.
   1180 """
   1181 if not hasattr(self, "_path_or_buf"):
-> 1182     self._open_file()

File ~anaconda3Libsite-packagespandasiostata.py:1212, in StataReader._open_file(self)
   1209         self._path_or_buf = BytesIO(handles.handle.read())
   1210     self._close_file = self._path_or_buf.close
-> 1212 self._read_header()
   1213 self._setup_dtype()

File ~anaconda3Libsite-packagespandasiostata.py:1294, in StataReader._read_header(self)
   1292     self._read_new_header()
   1293 else:
-> 1294     self._read_old_header(first_char)
   1296 self._has_string_data = len([x for x in self._typlist if type(x) is int]) > 0
   1298 # calculate size of a data record

File ~anaconda3Libsite-packagespandasiostata.py:1473, in StataReader._read_old_header(self, first_char)
   1471 self._format_version = int(first_char[0])
   1472 if self._format_version not in [104, 105, 108, 111, 113, 114, 115]:
-> 1473     raise ValueError(_version_error.format(version=self._format_version))
   1474 self._set_encoding()
   1475 self._byteorder = ">" if self._read_int8() == 0x1 else "<"

ValueError: Version of given Stata file is 69. pandas supports importing versions 105, 108, 111 (Stata 7SE), 113 (Stata 8/9), 114 (Stata 10/11), 115 (Stata 12), 117 (Stata 13), 118 (Stata 14/15/16),and 119 (Stata 15/16, over 32,767 variables).

There is a method given in this post that seems to have worked, but unfortunately I am very new to this sort of thing and it went over my head. (And I am new enough to stack overflow that I can’t comment to ask for clarification)

If someone could give me a very beginner friendly explanation of the above method, or has another method that works with files that old, I would greatly appreciate it