Date:         Tue, 17 Jun 2003 10:42:29 -0700
Reply-To:     Steve Goins <chess0001@YAHOO.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Steve Goins <chess0001@YAHOO.COM>
Subject:      Re: reading in excel data with proc import
Comments: To: eoyount@processedpork.duke.edu
In-Reply-To:  <Pine.GSO.4.53.0306171309030.4806@godzilla5.acpub.duke.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Yes, another way to import from and export to Excel data is ODBC.
Libname statement shows how to create a library reference to an Excel file.  Use ReadOnly = 1; if you want access to be read only.

libname xl odbc noprompt="DRIVER=Microsoft Excel Driver (*.xls);ReadOnly=0;DBQ=c:\files\LookAtStuff.xls;";

Some of the SAS/Access dataset options you might found useful: dbSasType, SasDateFmt, DbNull.

You can access the Excel file and its members as if it were a SAS library with tables, with a few exceptions (you cannot overwrite a sheet, but you can replace a sheet by deleting it first via Proc Delete or Proc SQL, and then writing to the same named sheet).

eoyount@DUKE.EDU wrote:
Hi all,

I have a large excel data set I'm trying to read in. Here's the problem:
it's too long for proc access to read in all records. I'm trying to use
proc import instead, but in some columns, I want them to be character
variables, but the first entry is numeric, so that's how it treats the
column. I would like to avoid splitting the data to smaller files or
saving it as a different format or using DDE.

Is there any way to force proc import to treat columns a certain way? Or
is there another way to import excel data?

Thanks,
Eric


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Eric Yount
Senior Data Technician
NC Education Research Data Center
Duke University

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