Building a custom dialog

The basic steps involved in building a custom dialog are:

Note: If you are working in compatibility mode, then some special considerations apply as noted in what follows.
  1. Specify the properties of the dialog itself, such as the title that appears when the dialog is launched and the location of the new menu item for the dialog within the IBM® SPSS® Statistics menus. See the topic Dialog Properties for more information.
  2. Specify the controls, such as source and target variable lists, that make up the dialog and any sub-dialogs. See the topic Control types for more information.
  3. Create the syntax template that specifies the command syntax to be generated by the dialog. See the topic Building the Syntax Template for more information.
  4. Specify properties of the extension that contains your dialog. See the topic Extension Properties for more information.
    Note: This step does not apply in Compatibility mode.
  5. Install the extension that contains the dialog to IBM SPSS Statistics and/or save the extension to an extension bundle (.spe) file. See the topic Managing custom dialogs for more information.
    Note: In Compatibility mode, you install the dialog to IBM SPSS Statistics and/or save the specification for the dialog to a compatible custom dialog package (.spd) file. See the topic Managing custom dialogs in compatibility mode for more information.

You can preview your dialog as you're building it. See the topic Previewing a custom dialog for more information.