Opening a SAS file

[michele_sas]

Hi, I wanted to let you know about a new SAS note that I hope will help with the issues posted here.

Problem Note 45779: Troubleshooting issues related to SAS file-type association in a Windows operating environment

http://support.sas.com/kb/45/779.html

Following the steps in the note will resolve most issues where you double click a file and it runs/batch submits or opens in Enterprise Guide when you expect it to open with SAS.

Bob, you mentioned in an earlier post that you didn't want to necessarily change the file association, that you just didn't want your SAS program to run when you try to open the file. You wanted it to open in the editor.

SAS and Enterprise Guide share some of the same file types, .sas is one them. Only one application can have the default action when you double click a .sas file. When SAS and Enterprise Guide are installed together, the last program to be installed is Enterprise Guide and because of that when you double click a file it will open in Enterprise Guide. SAS has a utility that allows
you to change the default action. You can choose between SAS Foundation or Enterprise Guide. Doing so will still keep all of your file type associations. The utility will only change the default action that is used when you double click the file.

The utility is the Manage SAS File Type utility. The SAS note I posted here has instructions for running the utility.

A file can end up running when you double click it (batch submitting) when you associate the file type with sas.exe. SAS.exe is what is used to batch submit. There is another executable which is used to open the file in the SAS windowing environment - sasoact.exe.

Please use the Manage SAS File type utility to associate .sas with sasoact.exe (the utility will do it automatically) instead of using the Windows tools because I have seen some issues when folks use the Windows tools to associate the default action with sasoact.exe and it doesn't work correctly.

Another thing I wanted to mention is that on Vista/Win7 when you right click and do an "Open With" and choose to open the file with SAS.exe it will likely become the default action. When you right click, Open With and choose the default action there is a check box that says "always use the selected program to open this kind of file". Once this happens a Windows registry edit is necessary to remove the default action of SAS.exe. The SAS note has a registry file that you can run to remove this key.  SAS does not recommend using the Windows tools to associate file types.

I hope you find this information helpful.

Michele

[Tom]

I number of users I know like to use their favorite text editor (Notepad+, Emacs, Xedit, Nedit, ...) to edit their source code.  Does this utility from SAS have options to support making an external editor the default option?

[michele_sas]

Hi Tom,

The SAS utility doesn't have an option to set the default action to a non-SAS application.  I have worked with a handlful of users who prefer to use their own editor. In that case the user first opens the application, Notepad for example,  and then opens the SAS file.   It is possible to do a custom edit in  the registry to get what you want,  but I have to add that SAS wouldn't support that. Any custom edits would of course be overwritten when installing new products or maintenance or when running the Manage SAS File Type utility.

Michele

[rentalman]

the text edit on my mac works perfectly well with this

[Sunshine_sas]

Hi everyone,

We just wanted to let you know that the new File Type paper has been released. This explains common file type issues in more detail.

http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings13/115-2013.pdf

Enjoy and best wishes,

Sunshine and Michele

[Michelle]

Hi,

Just wondering what the trick in SAS 9.4 is for opening sas files into the program editor by double-clicking (or right clicking) without the program being submitted? This has been driving me nuts since my version was upgraded from 9.3 to virtual 9.4... Tried going through the SAS Deployment Manager and changing file type to 'Base SAS' but the deployment manager just gets hung up and never completes.

Thanks!