https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Procedures/How-to-format-an-existing-variable/m-p/9665#M730 Putting the LENGTH statement before the SET statement should do it. Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:17:22 GMT Doc_Duke 2011-06-08T23:17:22Z https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Procedures/How-to-format-an-existing-variable/m-p/9664#M729 I have a data set which has a few variables. One variable is called sex, which has a fixed length of 1, and formatted as $1. (i.e. M, or Female). This variable also has missing values. Now the question is to set the missing values as 'Other'. The following is what I did:<BR /> <BR /> DATA work.test;<BR /> SET user.birth;<BR /> LENGTH sex $5.;<BR /> FORMAT sex $5.;<BR /> IF age=' ' THEN age='Other';<BR /> <BR /> Unfortunately, the missing values are set to be 'O'. How can I correct this without using any new variable names? Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:43:53 GMT https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Procedures/How-to-format-an-existing-variable/m-p/9664#M729 bncoxuk 2011-06-08T21:43:53Z https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Procedures/How-to-format-an-existing-variable/m-p/9665#M730 Putting the LENGTH statement before the SET statement should do it. Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:17:22 GMT https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Procedures/How-to-format-an-existing-variable/m-p/9665#M730 Doc_Duke 2011-06-08T23:17:22Z