1. worst, but still importable data I’ve ever seen Arthur Tabachneck Insurance Bureau of Canada

2. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS suppose you had the following excel file: format: text format: as shown format: m/d/yyyy format: d/m/yyyy format: text format: d-mon format: text

3. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS how the file got so bad: members of a secretarial pool were asked to enter the data, in Excel, while they were covering the front desk they (four different secretaries), obviously, weren’t given sufficient instructions their task was simply to enter some data, which happened to include a date

4. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS proc import can only be used if: you license SAS/Access Interface to PC File Formats and at least half of the relevant rows (based on your system’s and SAS guessingrows settings) are formatted as dates or you manually edit the spreadsheet and/or change your guessing rows settings so that condition #2 holds 1 2 3

5. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS If proc import can be used, three steps are necessary step 1: use mixed=no

6. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS which will import date formatted cells and assign missing values to the other cells

7. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS step 2: use mixed=yes which will import all cells as text

8. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS step 3 merge the two files and use inputn to read missing dates data want (drop=bdate); set inputa; set inputb (rename=(date=bdate)); if missing(date) then do; options datestyle=dmy; date=inputn(bdate, ‘anydtdte’, 20); end; if missing(date) then do; date=inputn(catt(scan(bdate,2,’-’), scan(bdate,1,’-’), scan(bdate,3,’-’)), ‘anydtdte’, 20); end; run;

9. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS resulting in the following file

10. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS however, if proc import can’t be used or if you simply want a better solution

11. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS you can do it with DDE options noxsync noxwait xmin; filename sas2xl dde 'excel|system'; step 1: set desired options and filename

12. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS Step 2: Open Excel data _null_; length fid rc start stop time 8; fid=fopen('sas2xl','s'); if (fid le 0) then do; rc=system('start excel'); start=datetime(); stop=start+10; do while (fid le 0); fid=fopen('sas2xl','s'); time=datetime(); if (time ge stop) then fid=1; end; end; rc=fclose(fid); run;

13. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS Step 3: Open workbook and insert old-style macro sheet data _null_; file sas2xl; put '[open("c:\worst data.xls")]'; run; data _null_; file sas2xl; put '[workbook.next()]'; put '[workbook.insert(3)]'; run; filename xlmacro dde 'excel|macro1!r1c1:r99c1‘ notab lrecl=200;

14. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS Step 4: Create and run Excel macro data _null_; file xlmacro; put '=set.name("Tag",!$b$1)'; put '=formula("<>",Tag)'; put '=set.name("OldValue",!$c$1)'; put '=set.name("NewValue",!$b$2)'; put '=for.cell("CurrentCell",sheet1!$a$2:$a$99,true)'; put '=formula(get.cell(5,CurrentCell),OldValue)'; put '=formula("=concatenate(Tag,OldValue)",NewValue)'; put '=formula(NewValue, CurrentCell)'; put '=next()'; put '=halt(true)'; put '!dde_flush'; file sas2xl; put '[run("macro1!r1c1")]'; put '[workbook.activate("sheet1")]'; put ‘[error(false)]’; put '[save.as(“c:\DateTest",6)]'; put '[quit()]'; run;

15. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS Step 5: Import the data data want (keep=date); infile "c:\DateTest.csv" dsd dlm="," lrecl=32768 firstobs=2; informat rawdate $20.; input rawdate; format date date9.; rawdate=substr(rawdate,3); if anyalpha(rawdate) then do; options datestyle=dmy; date=inputn (rawdate, 'anydtdte', 20 ); if missing(Date) then do; date=inputn(catt(scan(rawdate,2,'-'),scan(rawdate,1,'-'), scan(rawdate,3,'-')),'anydtdte', 20) ; end; end; else Date=rawdate-21916; run;

16. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS and obtain the desired result regardless of your system’s guessing rows setting or how your data is arranged

17. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS Author Contact Information Your comments and questions are valued and encouraged. Contact the author: Dr. Arthur Tabachneck Director, Data Management Insurance Bureau of Canada Toronto, Ontario L3T 5K9 Canada atabachneck at ibc dot ca or art297 at netscape dot net

18. Coder’s Corner April 12, 2010 Forum SAS Microsoft Corporation. Function Reference Microsoft EXCEL Spreadsheet with Business Graphics and Database: Version 4.0 for Apple® Macintosh® Series or Windows™ Series. Document AB26298-0592, 1992. Vyverman, K. Excel Exposed: Using Dynamic Data Exchange to Extract Metadata from MS Excel Workbooks, SESUG 17, 2003, paper TU15, St. Pete Beach, FL Vyverman, K. Re: How to flag special formatting from Excel in a SAS dataset. SAS-L Post, 2002, http://www.listserv.uga.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0209a&L=sas-l&D=1&O=A&P=12088 Vyverman, K. Re: MS Excel column widths. SAS-L Post, 2002, http://www.listserv.uga.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0201b&L=sas-l&P=25268 Vyverman, K. Using Dynamic Data Exchange to Export Your SAS Data to MS Excel – Against All ODS, Part I, SUGI 26, 2001, paper 190-27, Long Beach, CA. Key References