topic Re: Macro variable in ods rtf bookmark in SAS Programming

Macro variable in ods rtf bookmark

JensK — Sat, 18 Aug 2018 08:53:52 GMT

Hallo,

I do not have much experience in creating automatic reports in SAS. I experienced a problem while creating a report. I use ODS RTF and would like to set a bookmark by a macro variable. However, it does not work out.

The layout of the bookmark should be "2.1." with varying numbers indicated by a macro variable in the first position.

I assign a macro variable by

%macro compute;
%global table;
%let table=2;
%mend compute;
%compute;

and call a SAS code that creates the rtf-file.

The bookmark is set by

ods rtf bookmark = '&table..1';

The problem is that it is not allowed to use the &-sign in the bookmark statement.

(The anchor value "&table..13.14" is not valid for the "RTF" destination; anchors cannot contain white space, control characters, or any of the following: "()<>[]{}/%&\". Anchor value will be ignored.)

Thank you for your suggestions to solve that problem.

Best regards

Jens

Re: Macro variable in ods rtf bookmark

FreelanceReinh — Sat, 18 Aug 2018 10:24:05 GMT

Hallo @JensK and welcome to the SAS Support Communities!

The issue is that macro variable reference &table is not resolved because of the single quotes surrounding it. (You've probably got a warning in the log: "Apparent symbolic reference TABLE not resolved.") If you use double quotes instead, &table will be resolved so that the compiler will see the value (2) stored in the macro variable rather than an invalid expression containing an ampersand.

ods rtf bookmark = "&table..1";

Re: Macro variable in ods rtf bookmark

JensK — Sun, 19 Aug 2018 10:35:59 GMT

Hallo FreelanceReinhard,

thank you for the solution. It works and the rtf-file look like it is supposed to.

Best,

Jens