Date:         Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:38:44 -0500
Reply-To:     Phil Spence <linux70@COMCAST.NET>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Phil Spence <linux70@COMCAST.NET>
Subject:      Proc import with mutiple datatype for one column

I have a macro that reads the filenames from a director (all Excel files)
and then loops through, using SAS/Access to PC file formats to read the
Excel file, and then after the file is read into a SAS dataset, I use proc
sql to insert them into one table.

Everything works fine, however, some of the datatypes are different for a
particular field, depending on the file. In Oracle, I would just to_char
everything. But if I try to INPUT these fields as character, I get an error
stating that the character format requires a character value. Is there a
function to just import everything as character. TIA.