topic Re: Numeric data converted to scientific notation in .CSV file in SAS Data Management

Numeric data converted to scientific notation in .CSV file

renjithr — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 17:29:33 GMT

Hi All,

I am creating a .csv file in mainframe using SAS and email the file as an attachment. When I open the file the numeric data, for example, customer id 1234567898 is converted into 123E.11 something like that.

Could you please let me know how I can retain the format of the numeric variable in .CSV file( I know when I open the .csv file in Excel this weird conversion happens).

Please help.

Thanks

Re: Numeric data converted to scientific notation in .CSV file

ballardw — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 17:33:33 GMT

Don't open in Excel, or make the columns wider the appearnce should change.. CSV does not have any format information in the file, it is only text.

Re: Numeric data converted to scientific notation in .CSV file

Reeza — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 17:42:26 GMT

Open the CSV in a text editor (Notepad/Wordpad) and verify the data. Excel is most likely making the conversion automatically. Very nice of it. Usually making the cell bigger will change the format to a number. You can also, try to make it a character variable and make sure you export it as a quoted variable and then Excel MAY read it properly. Not always...

Re: Numeric data converted to scientific notation in .CSV file

renjithr — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 01:16:23 GMT

Hi All,

Thanks for the reponse.

Here is how I finally achieved retining the format of numeric variable in .CSV file.

data _null_;

file filout;

if _n_=1 then do;

put @1 '="'

@2 'Num variable'

@10 '"';

end;

put @2 num_var;

run;

The above trick works!