Proc import from excel

[Rou]

Hi all,

Whenever I import my data into SAS, this note below. Any ways around keeping the original data type when using proc import. Thanks.

NOTE: One or more variables were converted because the data type is not supported by the V9 engine.
For more details, run with options MSGLEVEL=I.

[Tom]

You can ignore that note. 

No idea why it generates that message, probably related to re-using a function/subroutine that can also be used in a situation where that message might make a difference.  SAS datasets only have two types of variables, fixed length character strings and floating point binary numbers.   Apparently something in the process is treating the EXCEL character strings as variable length strings so in theory they are changing data types since they are being converted into fixed length strings in the SAS dataset. But in reality nothing is being changed.

[Rou]

I checked and some of my variables that were in character format previously are now numeric. 

[Tom · Accepted solution]

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@Rou wrote:

I checked and some of my variables that were in character format previously are now numeric. 

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That cannot happen.  If you import the same spreadsheet again using the same code the result will be the same.

But if you import a DIFFERENT spreadsheet (even one you think has the same type of columns) then you can get different variable types.  That is because the TYPE of the variable created depends on the types of CELLS that are in the column.

For example if you have a column that nominally should be numeric but one cell has a string, such as 'NA' , in it then SAS will have to make a character variable to be able to store that character cell.

Another example is if you have column that nominally should be numeric but all of the cells are empty then SAS will make a character variable of length $1 since that takes less space than a numeric variable which requires 8 bytes of storage.

[Rou]

Makes sense, thank you!