topic Re: Deleting an Excel sheet with SAS on a unix server in New SAS User

Deleting an Excel sheet with SAS on a unix server

rudfaden — Thu, 23 May 2019 09:30:24 GMT

As far as i can tell, the Excel libname engine is not supported on unix. the xlsx engine is, but is does not allow for deleting excel sheets. So is there a way to delete a excel sheet on a unix server running SAS?

Re: Deleting an Excel sheet with SAS on a unix server

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 23 May 2019 09:40:24 GMT

Have you tried LIBNAME XLSX and PROC DELETE?

Re: Deleting an Excel sheet with SAS on a unix server

rudfaden — Thu, 23 May 2019 12:33:12 GMT

It does not work. As far as I understand this can only be done with the Excel engine which is not availible on unix. But if I am wrong, please let me know.

I get the error

ERROR: XL.Raaderum.DATA cannot be deleted because files cannot be deleted from the XL library.

Re: Deleting an Excel sheet with SAS on a unix server

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 23 May 2019 12:37:26 GMT

**** (insert suitable expletive here). I was hoping that SAS would be able to do this from what is basically a zip archive of XML files.

The way I see it, you could only create a new workbook and copy everything from old to new with the exception of the spreadsheet that is to be deleted.

But that would most probably kill a lot of information you want to keep (eg if you have a workbook with pretty formatted sheets).

Re: Deleting an Excel sheet with SAS on a unix server

xxformat_com — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 08:35:14 GMT

I don't have a straight forward solution.

However if you have an additonal computer with Windows installation, you could consider using proc upload/proc download to more the file there to complete the update with DDE... and then retrieve it on your Unix server.

Re: Deleting an Excel sheet with SAS on a unix server

Reeza — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 14:59:53 GMT

Just confirming you want to delete a sheet in a workbook, not the whole workbook? If it's the whole workbook, then you can use FDELETE.