topic Re: Date Imported but Exports String in SAS Enterprise Guide

Date Imported but Exports String

mmagnuson — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 12:18:52 GMT

I imported an excel file that has two date columns (B,C). I then created a computed column that references two datastes. One, that I imported and another one, dataset B that has a date column of D).If the dateB in dataset A equals a date D in dataset B then I want dateC from dataset A to populate. It does, but it populates as a string (20820) instead of 01MAR2017. If I look at datasetA after importing it shows up as 01MAR2017 and if I look at the dates in datasetB they also show up as 01MAR2017. Why is the computed column going to a string format?

In the computed column when I do the case statement it shows t1.'dateB'n which I assumed was the reason but when I try to type in 't1.'dateB'd it errors.

Please help!

Re: Date Imported but Exports String

RW9 — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 12:57:47 GMT

t1.'dateB'n - this has nothing to do with it. '...'n refers to a variable using named literals (i.e. doesn't conform to SAS standards).

20820 - this is the numeric representation of a date. Dates in SAS a numbers of days since a certain date, to display them in a date format, you would need to apply a date format for instance date9.

As for it being read in a character, that doesn't sound right as the date number is there, I assume you should just be able to apply a format to that variable.

Re: Date Imported but Exports String

mmagnuson — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 12:59:55 GMT

The format worked. For some reason I picked a different date format and still spit out numbers but when I clicked Date9. it came out in the excel sheet as a date.

Thanks for the help!