topic Did SAS Viya for Learners update the rule for naming the column when importing from xlsx in SAS Programming

Did SAS Viya for Learners update the rule for naming the column when importing from xlsx

TomHsiung — Thu, 01 May 2025 15:12:09 GMT

options validvarname = v7;
options symbolgen;
options fullstimer;

I remember by this system statements, we have

Patient ID # A column name in xlsx table.

became this

Patient_ID

in SAS after importing previously.

But now it is not working!

Re: Did SAS Viya for Learners update the rule for naming the column when importing from xlsx

ballardw — Thu, 01 May 2025 19:19:08 GMT

Did you execute the statement in the current session?

options validvarname = v7;

I suspect the Learners version resets many of the system options to defaults at start of the session.

Or show the log of what you have done to see if there is something else going on.

Such as possibly not replacing an existing data set on import.

Personally I have hated XLSX, and the predecessor XLS, file formats so much that I way prefer saving the file to CSV (comma separated values) and writing a data step to read the data from the resulting text file as then I control what the variable names are, the types, lengths and can add labels and formats as needed as well as data checking.

Even importing the CSV file will generate a data step code to see what was done and can be copied from the log and modified to do what is desired and not stuck with the black box of import of XLSX with no real feedback.

Re: Did SAS Viya for Learners update the rule for naming the column when importing from xlsx

TomHsiung — Fri, 02 May 2025 06:10:24 GMT

Thanks for the response.

Yep, I ran the options statement first, before I ran the import script.

SAS OnDemand also encountered the same issue.

PS: The same codes was fine previously.