Using Named Ranges in Excel

[wrathstone]

I'm very interested in using an Excel document declared as a library in order to read and write directly to certain cells for the purpose of updating specific cells as well as populating datasets. So far I've found named ranges very useful in this regard, but I've run up against the problem that assigning a named range to the contents of a table causes it to not appear in the available datasets.

Is there any way in SAS to read from an Excel cell range that has been formatted as a table? As a named range or otherwise?

Also, if there's a way to read from an Excel file while it's still open that would be really cool. Despite there being a readonly option it seems the libname statement still requires a file lock.

[tomrvincent]

I read in the entire worksheet with getnames=n and then I can manipulate/test cells as I see fit.