topic Re: Import data from Excel including date format in SAS Programming

Import data from Excel including date format

jonatan_velarde — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 13:42:29 GMT

Good morning my friends:

I have studied lots of tutorials talking about how to import correctly EXCEL files into SAS UNIERSITY EDITION, unfortunely all the trials were unsuccesfull, here i1ll show you thie tabe i have.

ID	ID_BIRTH_DATE	AGE	SEX
81	07/02/2007	.	M
271	08/26/2007	.	M
739	.	.	M
1515	12/01/2007	.	M
1533	.	.	M
3041	.	.	F
3122	08/29/1997	.	M
3123	08/29/1997	.	F
3124	09/08/1997	.	F
3125	09/08/1997	.	M
3126	09/08/1997	.	M
3127	10/12/1997	.	M
3128	10/12/1997	.	F
3129	11/18/1997	150	F
3130	11/18/1997	149	M
3131	11/19/1997	149	M
3131.1	11/19/1997	.	M
3132	11/19/1997	.	F
3133	11/19/1997	151	F
3134	11/19/1997	151	M

importing the file i use this commands:

PROC IMPORT DATAFILE="/folders/myfolders/EXAMPLE.xls"
   OUT=work.TEST1
   DBMS=XLS
   replace;
RUN;

and i obtain this:

ANIMAL	ANIMAL_BIRTH_DATE	PREGNANCY_LENGTH_DAYS	SEX
81	39265	.	M
271	39320	.	M
739	.	.	M
1515	39417	.	M
1533	.	.	M
3041	.	.	F
3122	35671	.	M
3123	35671	.	F
3124	35681	.	F
3125	35681	.	M
3126	35681	.	M
3127	35715	.	M
3128	35715	.	F
3129	35752	150	F
3130	35752	149	M
3131	35753	149	M
3131.1	35753	.	M
3132	35753	.	F
3133	35753	151	F
3134	35753	151	M

i NEED SOME ADVICES TO IMPORT CORRECTLY THE FORMAT DATE TO SAS UNIVERSITY EDITION.

i1M SENDING THE ORIGINAL XLS FILE TOO

THANK YOU

Re: Import data from Excel including date format

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 13:57:23 GMT

You obviously get the original, Excel-internal date value.

format ANIMAL_BIRTH_DATE mmddyy10.;
ANIMAL_BIRTH_DATE = ANIMAL_BIRTH_DATE - ('01jan1960'd - '30dec1899'd);

This should correct all your problems.

Alternatively, export your data from Excel to a reasonable transfer format like CSV, and import the data into SAS from that.

Re: Import data from Excel including date format

jonatan_velarde — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 14:11:43 GMT

kURT:

tHANK YOU FOR YOUR ANSWER, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO UNDESRTAND WHY I CAN'T GET THE SAME RESULTS AS SHOWS THIS YOUTUBE TUTORIAL (SAS MADE) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWBOEy9wSjo) IN THE MINUT 3:41.

The objective for using automatic importing is to save time formating after make the importation work. Could you helpo me to undertand this??

Thanks you very much

Re: Import data from Excel including date format

data_null__ — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 14:27:25 GMT

The video is using XLSX not XLS as you have.

EDIT: my testing show that for this data just changing to XLSX does not fix it.

Re: Import data from Excel including date format

jonatan_velarde — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 14:25:23 GMT

i tried both, and not same result 😞

Re: Import data from Excel including date format

data_null__ — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 14:27:54 GMT

Yea me too.

@jonatan_velarde wrote:
i tried both, and not same result 😞

Re: Import data from Excel including date format

jonatan_velarde — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 16:07:04 GMT

is there any document to use in this case?? or contact to SAS online suport

Re: Import data from Excel including date format

Reeza — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 16:26:35 GMT

You can try, but there's too many factors in play.

It depends on the version of Excel used, mac vs windows have different issues, your SAS version and the bitness between the two.

The sad fact is that proc import guesses...and its guesses aren't worth betting on.

Excel is not a database and does not have fixed types that it enforces for cells. This is create for excel, but not for data management.

Re: Import data from Excel including date format

jonatan_velarde — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 16:29:17 GMT

I exactly what i was expenting, currently i'm ussing LIBRE OFFICE to generate the EXCEL FILE, so maybo this is the problem.....i'll continue searching and/or trying into this, if anythig goes good here i'll let you know, thak you very much,

Re: Import data from Excel including date format

ballardw — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 18:11:12 GMT

Use LIbre Office to make a CSV file and import that. You'll likely have better luck. Also you can use the GuessingRows = statement to use more than the 20 rows or so that is used to "guess" when reading Excel files.

It may help to force your date columns to use the same date appearance before exporting to CSV.

An additional advantage of importing CSV is that SAS generates datastep code that should appear in the log. You can see exactly what was assigned for informat, format and variable name. And if you don't like something you can copy the code to the editor and modify it as needed.

If you are going to process many files of the same format I highly recommend getting the data step code. Then you can read other files and variable types stay the same, lengths of character variables stay the same and you can add labels and possibly even some initial data checking or custom error or warning messages for out of range or missing values that shouldn't be.

Re: Import data from Excel including date format

jonatan_velarde — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 18:15:41 GMT

Baller, i appreciate a lot your contribution, could you help me to learn this mwthodology please??? if you could send me some information to delsolarvelarde@gmail.com, or an example i will reproduce it.

Thank you very much

Re: Import data from Excel including date format

Kurt_Bremser — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 05:40:48 GMT

@jonatan_velarde wrote:
kURT:

tHANK YOU FOR YOUR ANSWER, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO UNDESRTAND WHY I CAN'T GET THE SAME RESULTS AS SHOWS THIS YOUTUBE TUTORIAL (SAS MADE) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWBOEy9wSjo) IN THE MINUT 3:41.

The objective for using automatic importing is to save time formating after make the importation work. Could you helpo me to undertand this??

Thanks you very much

Excel is very locale-dependent, and the (MS-supplied, therefore unreliable!) interface module (Data Access Objects) often delivers data in a way that makes it hard for SAS to realize that a column has certain attributes, like a date format.

The ONLY (in my dire experience) reliable way to communicate with Excel is to use a text-based file format (so you can inspect it with a simple text editor) and force correct formats in every step of the data transfer.

PROC IMPORT relies on guessing, and is good to do a "first shot", but it is in NO WAY meant for production use.

"Automatic importing" means setting up a reliable chain of steps which can be run from a scheduler and where every step checks for correct data and exits with error conditions if the criteria are not met.

Always keep in mind: computers are dumb, and making them do clever things is YOUR job.

Re: Import data from Excel including date format

ballardw — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 15:43:04 GMT

@jonatan_velarde wrote:
Baller, i appreciate a lot your contribution, could you help me to learn this mwthodology please??? if you could send me some information to delsolarvelarde@gmail.com, or an example i will reproduce it.

Thank you very much

Basic steps are very easy:

1) Find or create a basic CSV file.

2) Either use Proc Import code or the SAS file data import wizard for a CSV delimited file.

3) Look in the log.

There should be program with an infile statement describing the options used, Informat and Format statements, an Input statement and two lines related to checking if you have critical errors.

The Informats will tell you how SAS read a specific variable. If you thought it shoud be numeric and is character then you either have the Guessingrows value too small or something other than numeric values in the data.

If I want to consider longer character values, a common item, consider what is read. Your example data may have the longest value for a First Name to be 7 characters but you know that isn't likely to be long enough in other files, so increase the Informat and Format to a larger value such as $15. (I typically use $20 for first and middle names and $30 for last but your data may differ).

If a variable you thought was a date but gets read as a simple number (likely best32. or similar) look at your values. A "date" of 20140728 doesn't trigger the "guessing" rules of SAS to think of it as a date that a value like 07/28/2014 would. But you could change the Informat to YYMMDD8. to read as a date (and assign a date format for that variable that you like).

This is especially critical if you use "dates" with 2 digit years especiall if not at the end. For instance what date is 01/03/05 ? This could be Month first, Day of month first, or year first depending on data source.

The details are related to INPUT, INFILE, INFORMAT statements predominately.

Re: Import data from Excel including date format

Prashams — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 12:49:50 GMT

As excel reads the dates with some other cut off date try applying new_date=animal_birth_date-(60*365.25+1)