Saving or Sharing Your Dialog

At any point during the development of your dialog, you can save your work. To save a custom dialog, you save the extension that includes the dialog. Extensions are saved to extension bundle (*.spe and *.spxt) files. When your custom dialog is complete, you can share the extension bundle file with other users so that they can install it and use your dialog.

To save a custom dialog

  1. From the menus in the Custom Dialog Builder, choose:

    File > Save

  2. In the Save an Extension Bundle dialog box, specify a location for the extension bundle file.

    To resume work on your dialog, you open the extension bundle file that contains the dialog:

  3. From the menus in the Custom Dialog Builder, choose:

    File > Open

  4. In the Open an Extension Bundle dialog box, select the extension bundle file.

To share a custom dialog

  1. Distribute the extension bundle file, that contains the custom dialog, to the users of the dialog.

    Users can easily install the extension, which then installs the custom dialog:

  2. From the menus, they choose:

    Extensions > Install Local Extension Bundle

  3. In the Open an Extension Bundle dialog box, they select the extension bundle file that you distributed.
Note:
  • For Windows and Mac, you can also install an extension by double-clicking the extension bundle file.
  • Custom dialogs that are created within the Custom Dialog Builder for Extensions are not compatible with releases of IBM® SPSS® Statistics before release 24. To share custom dialogs that are compatible with pre-24 releases, you must create the custom dialog in Compatibility mode. You then save the custom dialog to a compatible custom dialog package (.spd) file. You can share the .spd file or you can add the .spd file to a new extension bundle and share the extension bundle.

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