Paul,

Please provide more details regarding what you are trying to accomplish and why you haven't been successful.

I ran the following two procs with the user (me) having already opened the spreadsheet in Excel:

PROC IMPORT OUT= WORK.TEST1 DATAFILE= "c:\sample.xls" DBMS=EXCEL2000 REPLACE; GETNAMES=YES; RUN; PROC IMPORT OUT= WORK.TEST2 DATAFILE= "c:\sample.xls" DBMS=EXCEL2000 REPLACE; GETNAMES=YES; RUN;

Even with c:\sample.xls open in Excel, both proc imports worked.

Art ------------- On Sat, 25 Nov 2006 14:35:30 -0800, Paul <vanwamelen@GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>Is there a way to make a copy of an external files from SAS (without >using SYSTEM or X)? > >I want to "proc import" an excel file even if the user already has it >open. The idea is to first copy it to C:\temp (OK not very portable...) >and then "proc import" the copy. I can do it with "system" and the >noxwait option, but that pops up that ugly window, very distracting. I >see I can do things like > rc=rename('d:\temp','d:\testfile','file'); >but is there an equivalent for "copy"? I can't find it anywhere! > >Any help would be greatly appreciated! > >Paul