topic Display tooltip for custom macros outside of active program in SAS Programming

Display tooltip for custom macros outside of active program

Malthe — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 11:41:45 GMT

Hi all,

I am part of a research-group where we look at data from a specific patient-group. Often we have to calculate scores, measures etc based on the same type raw-data. Therefore macros are essential to us and we use them frequently. But it could be made a lot easier:

When you invoke a function/macro that is defined by SAS-itself, you get a tooltip/help box. If you define a custom macro, in that same program, you will get a tooltip as well:

But this doesn't happen if you load the macros with the %include-function (which we often do).

Is there a way to make this help-text/tooltip visible to make input easier?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Re: Display tooltip for custom macros outside of active program

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 07:15:19 GMT

I'm afraid you can't; the editor can only "see" what it has in the editing buffer, or what it "knows" from prior knowledge (about the predefined macros). Since all it "sees" is the %include statement, it does not know what's in the file; it is as if you used a call to a macro that does not yet exist, but which you plan to write later.

Re: Display tooltip for custom macros outside of active program

s_lassen — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 08:15:14 GMT

I am not familiar with the tooltip function, but you could try submitting the %INCLUDE statements that define the macros, so that SAS knows them. Or perhaps move the macros to an autocall (SASAUTOS) folder, instead of using %INCLUDE.

Re: Display tooltip for custom macros outside of active program

ChrisNZ — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 09:17:10 GMT

It is interesting that tooltips appear for SAS-issued macros. If you get no answer here, ask tech support what mechanism is used for this to happen. Maybe you can leverage that mechanism.

Re: Display tooltip for custom macros outside of active program

Malthe — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 07:57:16 GMT

Thanks for all your answers 🙂

I hoped for a simple solution other than running the macro in each program-instance. The SAS-autocall might be a solution, but seems a bit too technical for me to grapple with at the moment.