topic Re: Recurring question: Automatically Adjust Row Height in Excel in SAS Programming

Recurring question: Automatically Adjust Row Height in Excel

ChrisNZ — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 05:11:53 GMT

Here is a table with variables that contain values of random lengths and random number of lines.
Q: Is there a way to export this to Excel from SAS so all values are visible inside a cell?

No wrapping, one line per value, cell width not that important.

It seems that ever since option autofit_height was removed, nothing works?
The EOL delimiter can be changed

data HAVE;
  x = catx( '0D0A'x, '0000000000', '4445566778','9999999999','9991123456'); 
run;

ods excel file="&wdir\print.xlsx" options(sheet_name='Test');          
  proc print data=HAVE noobs ;
  run;
ods excel close;

Setting cellwidth to force line wrapping as sometimes suggested does not look like a solution since it breaks lines randomly rather than where required.

Re: Recurring question: Automatically Adjust Row Height in Excel

Ksharp — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 07:06:08 GMT

Chris,

You could try option "tagattr=“ to avoid wrapping a line when you want to outpu an excel file.

Here is an example:

data HAVE;
  x = catx( '0D0A'x, '0000000000', '4445566778','9999999999','9991123456'); 
run;

ods excel file="c:\temp\print.xlsx" options(sheet_name='Test');          
  proc report data=HAVE nowd ;
  columns x;
  define _all_/display style={tagattr="wrap:no"};
  run;
ods excel close;

Re: Recurring question: Automatically Adjust Row Height in Excel

ChrisNZ — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 01:28:37 GMT

Thank you @Ksharp !

Sadly this doesn't expand the row height.

Excel actually behaves weirdly (this might be a company setup issue):

When I open the file, all values are in one row. Then I click on the cell, then on the formula bar and the cell changes to only display the top row.

In any case I cannot see the list of values because the row height is still the default height.

Re: Recurring question: Automatically Adjust Row Height in Excel

Ksharp — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 06:59:33 GMT

Chris,

Could you adjust it by hand ? Just click this button when you tap a cell.

Re: Recurring question: Automatically Adjust Row Height in Excel

LinusH — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:37:06 GMT

With some trial and error and AI conversation, I got all lines visible from your example:

data HAVE;
  x = catx( '0A'x , '0000000000', '4445566778','9999999999','9991123456'); 
run;

ods excel file="print.xlsx" options(sheet_name='Test' 
												 flow="Tables" 
												 row_heights="0,0,0,0,0");          
  proc print data=HAVE noobs ;
  	var x / style(column)={width=2.5cm
                           vjust=top 
                           tagattr="wrap:yes"
                       };
  run;
ods excel close;

But as you can guess, the setting of width= needs to be correlate with the actual length of your strings, which probably will make this hard to use in every day applications....?

Re: Recurring question: Automatically Adjust Row Height in Excel

Tom — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:31:23 GMT

What happens if you ask ODS itself to split the lines of text in the cells by using an ODS escape sequence?

data HAVE;
  x = catx( '(*ESC*)n' , '0000000000', '4445566778','9999999999','9991123456'); 
run;
filename xlsx '~/example.xlsx';
ods excel file=xlsx
 options(sheet_name='example' 
				flow="Tables" 
				)
;          
proc print data=have noobs;
run;
ods excel close;

That seems to come close when I open the XLSX file in Numbers application.