*SPSS syntax example by www.spss-tutorials.com.

*Set up test data.

data list free/v1.
begin data
1 2 3 4 5 6
end data.

value labels v1 1 'Very bad' 2 'Bad' 3 'Not good, not bad' 4 'Good' 5 'Very good' 6 'No answer'.
variable labels v1 "Variable one".

string v2 (a20).

compute v2 = valuelabels(v1).

variable labels v2 "Variable two".
execute.

*AUTORECODE just for creating template.

autorecode v1 /into v3/save template 'likert.sat'.

*Try and convert v2 into correctly coded numeric variable.

autorecode v2/into v4/apply template 'likert.sat'.

*Coding v4 is incorrect and different from v1.

set tnumbers both.

frequencies v1 v4.

*Look into AUTORECODE template.

get file 'likert.sat'.

*Weird. No trace of coding scheme applied for converting v2 into v4.

display dictionary.