topic Re: p106a05.sas & PPTX Not Appearing in Output Folder in SAS Programming

p106a05.sas & PPTX Not Appearing in Output Folder

ivarenho — Fri, 22 May 2026 22:47:13 GMT

I'm trying to figure out how to get the PPTX to show up in the output folder. I'm just on step 1, and it isn't popping up.

1 OPTIONS NONOTES NOSTIMER NOSOURCE NOSYNTAXCHECK;
NOTE: ODS statements in the SAS Studio environment may disable some output features.

Oh, and this error, I think this has been addressed in a previous post, and the consensus was it was an error message, just not turned off by the practice program creator.

Error Physical file does not exist C:\Users\learnsas-16391\&outpath\pressure.pptx.

Re: p106a05.sas & PPTX Not Appearing in Output Folder

Tom — Sat, 23 May 2026 03:05:41 GMT

Looks like you forgot to define the OUTPATH macro variable before using it.

Or possibly you are using single quotes instead double quotes. The macro processor ignores the text inside of strings bounded by single quotes, &outpath in '&output/pressure.pptx' will not be replaced with the value of the OUTPATH macro variable.

Re: p106a05.sas & PPTX Not Appearing in Output Folder

ivarenho — Sat, 23 May 2026 13:44:14 GMT

Thank you! I went ahead and defined the macro. I don't know how to correct the issue with the output features being disabled. Please see the note below. I'm also still getting the error that the file doesn't exist, which must be due to the output feature being disabled.

NOTE: ODS statements in the SAS Studio environment may disable some output features.

Re: p106a05.sas & PPTX Not Appearing in Output Folder

Kurt_Bremser — Sat, 23 May 2026 16:01:07 GMT

SAS Studio uses ODS to fetch output for display in your browser. By issuing your own ODS statements, you might interfere with this. That's what this NOTE tells you.

Re: p106a05.sas & PPTX Not Appearing in Output Folder

Cynthia_sas — Sat, 23 May 2026 17:29:55 GMT

Hi:

An additional note. If you are using the SAS OnDemand server for your work, you will need to download the PPTX file, as instructed in the activity because the OnDemand server does not open PPTX files.

Cynthia

Here is a shortened version of the code I use on the OnDemand server for this activity. If you are using some other interface for your activities and exercises, then you should only need to change the path location in the %LET and LIBNAME statements to run in your environment. On the SAS OnDemand server, each user has a unique userID, which you should see when you check the Properties on any folder under the Files (Home) location:

** For SAS OnDemand for Academics server solution p106a05;
%let outpath=/home/<youruserID>/EPG1V2/output;
libname pg1 '/home/<youruserID>/EPG1V2/data';

ods powerpoint file="&outpath/pressure.pptx" style=powerpointlight;

*** your code that produces output using the pg1 library SAS data***;

ods powerpoint close;

Re: p106a05.sas & PPTX Not Appearing in Output Folder

ivarenho — Sat, 23 May 2026 18:20:54 GMT

But the ODS statement was already written and put into the SAS studio for the practice exercise, I'm just not sure how to correct the issue and get the output to appear.

Re: p106a05.sas & PPTX Not Appearing in Output Folder

Tom — Sat, 23 May 2026 18:28:54 GMT

@ivarenho wrote:

Thank you! I went ahead and defined the macro. I don't know how to correct the issue with the output features being disabled. Please see the note below. I'm also still getting the error that the file doesn't exist, which must be due to the output feature being disabled.

NOTE: ODS statements in the SAS Studio environment may disable some output features.

Did you use double quotes to make the string literal you passed to the FILE= option of the ODS statement?

The key word in the note you got was MAY. It is only a problem if you change the ODS destinations that SAS/Studio (or perhaps Enterprise Guide) is using. You can see what what destinations are open by looking at the contents of SASHELP.VDEST.

Example:

 1          OPTIONS NONOTES NOSTIMER NOSOURCE NOSYNTAXCHECK;
 NOTE: ODS statements in the SAS Studio environment may disable some output features.
 73         
 74         filename pptx '~/example.pptx';
 75         *ods powerpoint file=pptx;
 76         proc print data=sashelp.vdest ;
 77         run;
 
 NOTE: There were 3 observations read from the data set SASHELP.VDEST.
 NOTE: PROCEDURE PRINT used (Total process time):
       real time           0.02 seconds
       cpu time            0.03 seconds
       
 
 78         *ods powerpoint close;
 79         
 80         OPTIONS NONOTES NOSTIMER NOSOURCE NOSYNTAXCHECK;
 92

So as long as you don't use HTML5(WEB) or RTF(WEB) or PDF(WEB) in your ODS statements they will not conflict with the destinations that SAS/Studio is using for its record keeping.

Also notice that the NOTE appears even though the ODS statements are inside comments. The NOTE is apparently triggered by some scan of the submitted code that SAS/Studio does BEFORE it sends the code to SAS to run and not by SAS itself.

Re: p106a05.sas & PPTX Not Appearing in Output Folder

Tom — Sat, 23 May 2026 18:32:46 GMT

@ivarenho wrote:

But the ODS statement was already written and put into the SAS studio for the practice exercise, I'm just not sure how to correct the issue and get the output to appear.

Fix the filename used in the ODS statement to make sure it points to a valid file on your SAS server. If you want to use a macro variable reference then make sure to use double quotes to form the string literal that contains the filename.

For example these two lines will point the ODS POWERPOINT output to a file named powerpoint.pptx in your home directory on a Unix server.

%let outpath=~;
ods powerpoint file="&outpath/powerpoint.pptx";

But if you using single quotes then SAS would try to make a file named literally &outpath/powerpoint.pptx in the current working directory, which is probably not a location that you have permission to write a file.

Re: p106a05.sas & PPTX Not Appearing in Output Folder

ivarenho — Sat, 23 May 2026 23:21:28 GMT

I have been using the double quotation marks, but I'm still getting the same errors. I tried defining the file and its type as pptx.

Re: p106a05.sas & PPTX Not Appearing in Output Folder

ivarenho — Sat, 23 May 2026 23:33:17 GMT

I have been using double quotation marks; I haven't changed the output location, as far as I can tell. I just ran the practice code and got that error.

Re: p106a05.sas & PPTX Not Appearing in Output Folder

Tom — Sun, 24 May 2026 01:01:16 GMT

There is something you are not seeing.

Copy the lines from the SAS log and paste into this forum in the pop-up box that appears when you hit the Insert Code icon (looks like < / > ).

Include from the point where you define the macro variable to the the ERROR message.

Using SAS ODA I was able to create an example where a minor change causes an error.

Working Code Example:

 74         %let outpath=~;
 75         ods powerpoint file="&outpath/example.pptx";
 76         proc means data=sashelp.class;
 77         run;
 
 NOTE: There were 19 observations read from the data set SASHELP.CLASS.
 NOTE: PROCEDURE MEANS used (Total process time):
       real time           0.05 seconds
       cpu time            0.06 seconds
       
 
 78         ods powerpoint close;
 NOTE: Writing POWERPOINT file: ~/example.pptx

Failing code example:

 74         %let outpath=~;
 75         ods powerpoint file="&outpath\example.pptx";
 76         proc means data=sashelp.class;
 77         run;
 
 NOTE: There were 19 observations read from the data set SASHELP.CLASS.
 NOTE: PROCEDURE MEANS used (Total process time):
       real time           0.05 seconds
       cpu time            0.05 seconds
       
 
 78         ods powerpoint close;
 ERROR: Invalid physical name.

Can you see the difference?

The forward slash, / , was changed to a backslash, \.

Unix the backslash character, \ , is used as an Escape character. It means that the next character should be taken literally instead of having some specially meaning. In this case since the next character has no special meaning the backslash does nothing. Causing SAS to merge my username with the filename.

So instead of trying to create a file in my home directory SAS tried to create file in the parent directory of my home directory using a file name made up of my username with example.pptx appended to it.