In reply to Peter.

Asterisks indicate a special date, right? For example, I format my wife's birthday with asterisks.

Okay, actually it happens most often when an incompatible date format is applied to a datetime value -- requiring the use of the datepart() function or else a date-only-display format like DTDATE9. If you have an additional special tip to share on this Peter, I invite you to start a discussion in the SAS programming community.