In addition to Microsoft no longer pushing DDE there are other programs that interfere with the communication channels that DDE attempts to use.
I had one program that used DDE that I only needed about once a year.
One year the program that had been working didn't create the output. I spent hours looking through the changes to my system and came to a new program installed, Cisco Jabber, that was the culprit. Not only did I have to stop the program from running I had to go into the Windows Task Manager an KILL the process to get my program to work.
Other programs, and I have no idea of all of them, are likely to have similar interference.
Plus there are the bits about code that can be dependent on the version of Office installed to correctly reference files for operations like Save.
You can place any SAS output that writes to the RESULT window inside an ODS sandwich to direct output to an RTF or Word document.
ods rtf file="C:\folder\subfolder\sample.rtf";
proc print data=sashelp.class;
run;
ods rtf close;