topic Re: Graphs and Excel in Graphics Programming

Graphs and Excel

AnalytX — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:02:54 GMT

Hi everybody,

Is it possible to generate graphical representations using SAS in an Excel document which can be customizable with Excel?

Thanking you in advance for your answers.

Best regards,

Re: Graphs and Excel

Reeza — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:14:55 GMT

Generally no. However there are a lot of workarounds, but you'd need to explain more of what you're trying to do.

SAS graphics are pretty good (IMO) and even better if you go down the GTL route.

Re: Graphs and Excel

AnalytX — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:26:11 GMT

Thanks for your answer Reeza.

The idea is to automatically create statistical graphs which can be edited using Excel. In this way, our users can customize themselves graphs for "details" (for instance change colors, ...) without the need of always come back to us to change SAS programs.

Re: Graphs and Excel

Reeza — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:29:55 GMT

If you have specific graph types and this is worth automating then I'd look into the following option:

1. Designing Excel templates for each graph type, Kaplan Meier Curve and ROC curve for example, based on the SAS output you get from the relevant procedures.

2. Populate the templates and have those as the graphs used for providing to users.

The work is in setting up the templates initially because doing KM curves in Excel is a bit of a pain, but it depends on how often you need it. But I hate spending hours customizing labels, thickness of lines and colours personally.

Re: Graphs and Excel

AnalytX — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:04:43 GMT

Thanks a lot Reeza for you answer. I think it would be the better way to work with Excel templates working with SAS outputs.

Best,