topic Re: MS Access Variable Name 1Quarter, Rename in SAS? in SAS Procedures

MS Access Variable Name 1Quarter, Rename in SAS?

JaySwan — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:30:52 GMT

We have a job that reads in an MS Access table with a variable named 1Quarter.

Not having any luck renaming the variable to a SAS compliant name.

Any ideas?

Our last option would be to go back into MS Access and rename it before the import, just want to check to see if there is another way to rename.

TIA J

MS Access Variable Name 1Quarter, Rename in SAS?

art297 — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:46:13 GMT

I would think that SAS would convert the name to be _1Quarter. You could change it to be either Quarter1 or Quarter_1.

MS Access Variable Name 1Quarter, Rename in SAS?

JaySwan — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:55:55 GMT

I sort of brute forced this one for now, exported into excel then created a new dataset in sas with correct names and imported...

Not a 100% solution but ok for now...

Thanks, Jay

Re: MS Access Variable Name 1Quarter, Rename in SAS?

Ksharp — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 02:47:14 GMT

You need:

options validvarname=any;

Ksharp

Re: MS Access Variable Name 1Quarter, Rename in SAS?

DouglasMartin — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 13:05:18 GMT

I had similar problems a few years ago when I was having SAS "talk to" Access a lot. In addition to options validvarname=any that Ksharp mentioned, you will probably need to use name literals (I think that's what their official name is), e.g. "1Quarter"n (note the n following the quote to indicate it is a name, not a string).

Try something like

options validvarname=any;

data new;

set old;

rename "1Quarter"n = Quarter1;

run;