"Can you show me how to view my SAS data and report output in Excel?" has been a popular question with SAS programming students. In this brief Q&A, instructor Theresa Stemler, shares some news that should be music to the ears of anyone who wants to learn how to view SAS datasets or reports in Microsoft^® Excel:

How did the development of the new Exporting SAS Data Sets and Creating ODS Files for Microsoft Excel training course come about?

SAS Training has touched on techniques for viewing SAS dataset and report output in Excel in a few of our courses in the past, however, many of our students have given us feedback that they’d like more in-depth coverage on this topic in class.  Based on that feedback, we moved forward to develop a new course exclusively devoted to the topic.  After working for six months on development, I’m really excited about teaching the course to students this year.

Which type of student could benefit from the new course?

We recommend this course to users who have been writing SAS programs for at least six months or who have taken our SAS Programming 1: Essentials course, but, students who’ve taken our Statistics 1: Intro to ANOVA, Regression and Logistic Regression could also benefit.

Really, this course could be helpful to all SAS users outside of the BI environment who need to view SAS datasets or SAS reports in Excel.  Inside the BI environment, there’s a different way to accomplish getting SAS information into Excel, and our Accessing SAS from the Microsoft Office Applications course addresses that approach.

What are some of the most popular techniques that students will learn in the new course?

Students often want to know how to control the formatting that shows in Excel.  In the course, we’ll show them how to preserve leading zeros and specify date formats using several different techniques.  Another task students often ask about is how to customized worksheet names.  In class, we discuss several methods for customizing worksheet names.  Overall, students who take the course will learn six distinct methods that show the latest techniques to export SAS data sets and create ODS files for Excel.

Can you share a quick tip from the new course? 

Let’s say you’re working in SAS and you quickly need to make a CSV file from PROC MEANS output to send to your boss. Instead of using the default destinations in EG or SAS Display Manager, you could do this:

ODS CSVALL file='c:\temp\myreport.csv';
proc means data=sashelp.class min mean max median;
  var height weight;
  class sex;
  ‘Summary Statistics for SASHELP.CLASS’;
run;

ODS CSVALL CLOSE;

Then run your code, go to your C: drive to send the file to your boss.

You can learn about this topic and more in the new Exporting SAS Data Sets and Creating ODS Files for Microsoft Excel course.