Hi:
I do not have Excel 2003 to test with. So you might have to go to Tech Support if the following suggestion does not work. I discovered that ODS ESCAPECHAR methods of inserting a {dagger} do not appear to work with TAGSETS.EXCELXP.
However, once I corrected the errors in the suboption list (all suboptions must be quoted), inserting a dagger symbol that I had pasted from elsewhere only needed a specific font (such as Arial Unicode MS) to work (in Excel 2010).
As you can see in the code below, the HTML "flavor" uses all 3 methods of inserting a dagger symbol. However, the XML "flavor" only uses the TITLE2 method (cut and paste). ODS MSOFFICE2K produces HTML output that Excel knows how to open and render. ODS TAGSETS.EXCELXP produces Spreadsheet 2003 XML that Excel knows how to open and render. Clearly, Excel is happiest, in the XML, using a cut and pasted dagger symbol.
For specific Excel 2003 questions and TAGSETS.EXCELXP questions, you might have to work with Tech Support.
cynthia
[pre]
ods _all_ close;
%let sh = wombat;
%let colwidth=10;
ods msoffice2k file="c:\temp\dagger_mso.xls" style=sansprinter;
ods tagsets.ExcelXP file="c:\temp\dagger_xp.xls" style=sansprinter;
ods escapechar='^';
ods tagsets.ExcelXP options(embedded_titles='yes' sheet_name="&sh"
embedded_footnotes='yes'
absolute_column_width= "&colwidth"
frozen_headers="7");
title1 c=black h=14pt f="Arial Unicode MS" "For XP, only title 2 uses dagger symbol";
title2 c=black f="Arial Unicode MS" h=14pt "Is this a dagger I see before me? † ";
title3 c=black f="Arial Unicode MS" h=14pt "&sysdate9. and Something Else ^{dagger}";
title4 c=black f="Arial Unicode MS" h=14pt "Insert Unicode ^{unicode 2020} (feature SAS 9.2)";
footnote "title2, 3 and 4 all work in ODS MSOFFICE2K HTML-based destination";
proc print data=sashelp.class(obs=3) label u noobs;
var _all_;
run;
ods _all_ close;
[/pre]