PaigeMiller Tracker

Re: Transpose Account Data which has multiple entries into multiple columns.

PaigeMiller — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 11:31:50 GMT

You can use PROC TRANSPOSE as in this example:

https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/pgmsascdc/9.4_3.4/proc/n01rzqgzs8vq1bn10h1wtx914kyf.htm

If you want actual code, you will need to provide data in a usable form, as seen in these examples and instructions.

PS: I understand that a key person wants the data in this form; but please understand that is the only reason to do this. If you are programming for yourself, and want to use the results in further analyses, tables or plots, you would never do this transpose. As stated by @Kurt_Bremser , this transposed arrangement of the data makes all other programming much more difficult.

Re: SAS Support Communities metrics and their trends

PaigeMiller — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 13:55:13 GMT

@FreelanceReinh wrote:

Yes, it looks like those mathematical inaccuracies occurred too frequently in Copilot's training data.

Sadly, it's not just using words wrong. It doesn't do calculations properly either. One day I was lazy and asked Copilot to compute MPH for my walk, in which I walked 3 miles (exactly) in 56 minutes and 36 seconds. Copilot walked me through the math and for the first step, Copilot told me that 56 minutes and 36 seconds is 56.61 minutes. Can you spot the error? (it's a small error but certainly not round-off error) There was another math error in the next calculation as well.

Re: SAS Support Communities metrics and their trends

PaigeMiller — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 22:06:21 GMT

I asked an AI chatbot (Copilot) why traffic is way down at internet help sites. The answer:

Traffic on StackOverflow and similar help sites is down because several structural shifts all hit at once, and the data is now overwhelming: generative AI replaced most routine Q&A, moderation friction pushed newcomers away, and expert contributors withdrew when their effort stopped being rewarded. The collapse is not subtle — question volume is down 29× from its peak, and many sites are back to launch‑year activity levels.

Interesting how Copilot does not seem to recognize that multiplication and division are not the same thing. Down 29x is not the same as 1/29th. I do realize that many people make this same mistake in their speech and in their writing.

Re: Will this work to partition a large data set into 10?

PaigeMiller — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 16:30:05 GMT

It would still help if you would be specific, instead of using the very vague word "processing". I'm sure many people here have good ideas on how to handle large data sets, but we can't help you unless we know what you going to do next.

Also, how big is this data set, in terms of rows and columns?

Re: Will this work to partition a large data set into 10?

PaigeMiller — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 15:53:35 GMT

I would like to suggest that splitting data sets like this is rarely needed and is rarely a good idea, and it usually makes the next steps in your programming more difficult. If you tell what you plan to do next with this data, we could advise on a better approach.

If, for example, you want to perform a regression analysis on each split, you can do so like this (and of course this method applies to almost every PROC even if it is not regression)

data large_set1;
    set large_set;
    id=mod(_n_,10);
run;
proc sort data=large_set1;
    by id;
run;
proc freq data=large_set1;
    by id;
    model y=x;
run;

Re: What is collinearity and why does it matter?

PaigeMiller — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:58:26 GMT

Partial Least Squares ought to be mentioned here. In my opinion, it is the best modeling tool when you have collinearity among the X variables, and is widely used in some areas, like spectroscopy (and of course is used in many other areas). Please see the paper by Tobias (of SAS Institute), in which he takes 1,000 highly correlated predictors, and still obtains a useful model, without all the time-consuming messiness of reducing variables. Also see the paper by Bartell (from JMP) here.

Re: html email

PaigeMiller — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:52:25 GMT

Perhaps the %NRSTR function will work here. But yes, definitely show us your code. In fact, please, from now on, ALWAYS show us your code in the first post on a topic.

Re: Sum values over repeated variable values

PaigeMiller — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 17:54:02 GMT

Agreeing with @Tom that numbers should not characters.

Once you perform the conversion to have numeric values, PROC SUMMARY or PROC MEANS produces the dataset or output you want.

Re: Estimation and significance test

PaigeMiller — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 13:42:23 GMT

SAS has never (as far as I know) used the normal distribution when there are more than 30 data points. It uses the t-distribution even when there are 30,000 data points (or more) assuming of course that the t-distribution is the correct distribution for the problem.

The idea of using the normal distribution when there are more than 30 data points is an approximation, and was useful back in the days before computers and you had to use a look-up table. But it isn't really needed with modern computers.

Re: Estimation and significance test

PaigeMiller — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 18:56:53 GMT

Are you using PROC VARMAX? It would appear that the parameter estimates follow a t-distribution.

According to the documentation, the parameter estimates converge to a multivariate normal distribution as T approaches infinity (T apparently is the number of data points), which means before they converge they are likely a t-distribution.

Re: Allow Custom DateTime Display Formats

PaigeMiller — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:12:05 GMT

As I said in another one your suggestions, I don't think this belongs in Suggestions. When some numbers aren't displayed as you want, you could simply apply the right format/function to the data before displaying it. SAS already gives you all the tools to display dates, datetimes and times in whatever way you want.

So if you have a variable named DATETIME which contains year, date, month, hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds, you could create a new variable which contains the time part and format it as you wish.

In a SAS data step

hour_min = timepart(datetime);
format hour_min hhmm.;

Re: Display Numeric IDs Without Thousands Separators

PaigeMiller — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 12:58:10 GMT

I'm not sure this belongs in the Suggestions section. It seems easy for you to change. (And by the way, you don't say how your data set is created, but it may be that whoever created the data set included the commas for some reason. There is really nothing in SAS that forces these numbers to have commas.)

If these are numeric, you can simply change the format to remove the commas. If these are character, you can use the COMPRESS function to get rid of the commas.

Re: ods excel file

PaigeMiller — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 10:42:36 GMT

@Tecla1 wrote:
Good Morning....
Tnks fo your replay... I receive this error:
ERROR: Insufficient authorization to access /Totale_campioni_polizze_addebiti__&des..XLSX.

This is why you ALWAYS need to include the log when you have code the doesn't work. There's no way we could have guessed from your code and extremely brief description that this is the problem. And we want not just the error message, but the code in the log that precedes the error message, you need to show us at least one PROC or DATA step in the log before the error message.

I think @Quentin has the right answer.

Re: ods excel file

PaigeMiller — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 18:47:23 GMT

Posting code that doesn't work, without a log, is usually not productive. ALWAYS show us the log. And we need to see not just the error messages; we need to see the preceding code as well, covering one whole PROC or DATA step before the error message.

Also, the description of the problem is way too brief: "I'm not able in any way to put more sheet in the same file."

Re: How do I use SAS Viya?

PaigeMiller — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 18:41:24 GMT

SAS offers many tutorial videos about SAS Viya. There's even one called "SAS Viya Quick Start".

https://video.sas.com/category/videos/sas-viya-quick-start

Re: Upgraded to VIYA LTS2025.09, now macro code throws an error after 5 years of running.

PaigeMiller — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 18:26:20 GMT

Is there an option set at invocation or in an AUTOEXEC file or at the top of the program to use an external (to your program) macro library? For example:

options sasautos=(sasautos 'G:\xxxx\xxxxxxxxxx\xxxxxxx\Users\MillerP\Macros');

This allows users to use any macro in my Macros folder, without including the macro in the program itself. Of course, in your case the command would use a different folder than I showed above. If that macro library has moved or been deleted, you would get the error you showed. If there is no such option in your invocation or autoexec or at the top of the program, you would get the error you showed. Maybe this option should be added to your code, if you can find where the macro library is located.

The log you show from an earlier run produces PROC REPORT code, that must be coming from somewhere. Most likely — almost definitely — it is coming from the now unavailable macro named %create_state_tab. You say it was never interpreted as a macro, but the old log that you provided makes it clear it was a macro.

It would help diagnose and debug macros if you added the option MPRINT to your autoexec or at the top of the calling program. I have it always turned on, as it doesn't hurt if you don't need it, but it is extremely helpful when creating and running macros. In your autoexec, use

options mprint;

Re: Update a variable’s value based on the value of another variable

PaigeMiller — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:14:17 GMT

Agreeing 110% with @Quentin . Reports are not meant for additional SAS data analysis, even if you choose to store them as a SAS data set. We gave you advice in your previous thread, you ignored it, and so now you have additional problems that could have been avoided had you followed our advice. Unfortunately, we see that from many SAS users.

It would be better if you kept the data in proper SAS data set form so you could continue to analyze it, and also created the report (perhaps saved as a second SAS data set, although this is not required or recommended).

Your problem description appears to me to be incomplete. Are we only changing the one row with Class1=. directly under Class1='Blood_disease'? We only change this one row to have the Value in the row above? Could there be more than one row under Blood_disease? Do we ever need to do this with Lung_disease? Are there ever any other diseases mentioned in Class1? If so, what do we do with these? Does your real data have only one patient, or are the multiple patients in your data set that we will need to do this? If there is more than one patient, how would that data set look?

Re: Calculate CI from a rate

PaigeMiller — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 14:26:15 GMT

Your data does not match the problem description where you said

Complete_response = 5 pts

Overall = 6 pts.

Rate = 5/6 pts = 0.83. Note that the numerator is included in the denominator.

Sometimes you have to modify the data set to match the description, or vice versa.

Your analysis uses the WEIGHT statement and so it is calculating results based on 11 "units" (5+6=11) and a proportion of 5/11, but that doesn't sound like what you want.

Re: Add white row before a variable value

PaigeMiller — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:35:17 GMT

Can you explain why a dataset has to have a blank line?

It makes perfect sense to have an output from PROC REPORT or PROC PRINT with a blank line. I can't think of a reason why a dataset needs a blank line.

Re: Macro with PRXMATCH

PaigeMiller — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 22:30:36 GMT

@SASdevAnneMarie wrote:
Thank you, Tom.
I'm wondering if I can do this with "prxmatch" :
%macro mymacro(var);
if (prxmatch("/\b0[,\.]&VAR.\s*%/",lb_lg)>0 then ....
%mend;
%mymacro(var=50);

Your are wondering if you can do this with prxmatch. The answer is for you to try it.

it is impossible for me to advise you further since I don't know what you are trying to do. Would you please explain what you are trying to do? Please explain in words without reference to PRXMATCH or any other code.