https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Procedures/how-to-define-variable-when-using-Proc-Import/m-p/60793#M17236 You might want to check out the GUESSINGROWS option. It has a default of 20. This means that if your longer fields appear after 20 rows, IMPORT will not consider them when calculating the column length.<BR /> <BR /> /Linus Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:18:00 GMT LinusH 2008-11-11T20:18:00Z https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Procedures/how-to-define-variable-when-using-Proc-Import/m-p/60792#M17235 Hi,<BR /> I want to import a .txt data to SAS using proc import. But SAS always truncates my string variables. e.g. EXCESSIVEWET is truncated to be EXCESSIV.<BR /> <BR /> How do I define the length of variable while using proc import? the procedure that I used is:<BR /> <BR /> Proc import datafile='C:\Nov.txt'<BR /> out=mylib.nov dbms=tab replace;<BR /> getnames=yes;<BR /> run;<BR /> <BR /> Thanks Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:23:08 GMT https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Procedures/how-to-define-variable-when-using-Proc-Import/m-p/60792#M17235 deleted_user 2008-11-11T16:23:08Z https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Procedures/how-to-define-variable-when-using-Proc-Import/m-p/60793#M17236 You might want to check out the GUESSINGROWS option. It has a default of 20. This means that if your longer fields appear after 20 rows, IMPORT will not consider them when calculating the column length.<BR /> <BR /> /Linus Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:18:00 GMT https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Procedures/how-to-define-variable-when-using-Proc-Import/m-p/60793#M17236 LinusH 2008-11-11T20:18:00Z