How do I read/write Excel files in SAS?

Reading an Excel file into SAS

Suppose that you have an Excel spreadsheet called auto.xls. The data for this spreadsheet are shown below.

MAKE           MPG  WEIGHT PRICE
AMC Concord    22   2930  4099
AMC Pacer      17   3350  4749
AMC Spirit     22   2640  3799
Buick Century  20   3250  4816
Buick Electra  15   4080  7827

Using the Import Wizard is an easy way to import data into SAS.  The Import Wizard can be found on the drop down file menu.  Although the Import Wizard is easy it can be time consuming if used repeatedly.  The very last screen of the Import Wizard gives you the option to save the statements SAS uses to import the data so that they can be used again.  The following is an example that uses common options and also shows that the file was imported correctly.

PROC IMPORT OUT= WORK.auto1 DATAFILE= "C:\auto.xls" 
            DBMS=xls REPLACE;
     SHEET="auto1"; 
     GETNAMES=YES;
RUN;

• The out= option in the proc import tells SAS what the name should be for the newly-created SAS data file and where to store the data set once it is imported. 
• Next the datafile= option tells SAS where to find the file we want to import. 
• The dbms= option is used to identify the type of file being imported. 
• The replace option will overwrite an existing file.
• To specify which sheet SAS should import use the sheet="sheetname" statement.  The default is for SAS to read the first sheet.  Note that sheet names can only be 31 characters long.
• The getnames=yes is the default setting and SAS will automatically use the first row of data as variable names.  If the first row of your sheet does not contain variable names use the getnames=no. 

Writing Excel files out from SAS

It is very easy to write out an Excel file using proc export in SAS.

Here is a sample program that writes out SAS data called mydata to an Excel file called mydata.xls into the directory "c:\dissertation".

proc export data=mydata outfile='c:\mydata.xls' dbms = xls replace;
run;