topic Re: PDF output problem (not using ODS) in ODS and Base Reporting

PDF output problem (not using ODS)

RickM — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:25:56 GMT

Hi all,

We are having some problems with printing SAS output to pdf files. We are using Win2PDF to print from the SAS output window. Most of the time this works fine but when we print a page with proc means instead of getting the lines at the top and bottom of the tables we end up with a row of script f's. Apparently we had this problem a while back but no one remembers how we fixed it.

I would suspect this is more likely a problem with the pdf printer since the output looks fine in SAS but I was wondering if anyone else had run into this or had any ideas.

Thanks,
Rick

Re: PDF output problem (not using ODS)

data_null__ — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:09:45 GMT

Sounds like a problem that can be fixed with the SAS system option FORMCHAR. See docs for details.

Re: PDF output problem (not using ODS)

RickM — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:33:00 GMT

Thanks for the tip. It looks like the FORMCHAR in the SASV9.CFG file needs to be changed. This also explains why we get different results on different machines. This paper was very helpful if anyone else is interested.

http://www2.sas.com/proceedings/forum2007/063-2007.pdf

Re: PDF output problem (not using ODS)

RickM — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:36:01 GMT

So we just switched out the old SASV9.CFG file from a computer that doesn't have this problem but that didn't work. Changing the FORMCHAR setting would still work but it is bugging us that we cant figure out what was done to fix the other installations of sas.

Apparently years ago the previous statistician had a cd with the fix on it and told us not to loose it...