How to send email using SAS
An email message is a great way to send a notification when a SAS job completes, or to distribute a result from SAS as an attached report or spreadsheet. The SAS programming language allows you to send email as an output via the FILENAME EMAIL method.
In this article:
- Sending email with SAS: a simple example
- How to configure SMTP to send email in SAS
- How to use email attributes in SAS
- How to format your email using ODS
- How to send email with attachments in SAS
- How to send email with embedded images in SAS
- How to send email to multiple recipients in SAS
- How to send a text message using SAS
- How to use Gmail or cloud-based service to send email with SAS
Sending email with SAS: a simple example
The FILENAME EMAIL statement allows you to specify all of the component parts of an email message, including Subject, recipients (To, CC, BCC), From, Importance and more. Here's an example of a small SAS program that produces some data and generates an email message with data-driven values and a small message body.
options emailsys=smtp;
/* Small SAS job to produce some data */
%let origin = Europe;
proc sql;
create table subset as
select * from sashelp.cars
where origin = "&origin.";
%let count=&sqlobs.;
quit;
/* Email message with dynamic content based on data */
filename msg email
to="chuck.sasuser@company.com"
from="replies-disabled@company.com"
subject = "Created: Cars from &origin.";
data _null_;
file msg;
put "%trim(&count.) cars selected, subset from &origin.";
run;
In the SAS log, you'll see the action taken:
NOTE: The file MSG is:
E-Mail Access Device
Message sent
To: "chuck.sasuser@company.com"
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: Created: Cars from Europe
Attachments:
And the recipient sees something like this in their inbox:
How to configure SMTP to send email in SAS
When sending email, SAS is acting as an email client. SAS requires an email service to send the messages, and this is typically accessed via SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). In your SAS environment this might already be configured for you, or you might need to specify SMTP settings using SAS options. These options include EMAILSYS, EMAILHOST, EMAILPORT and more.
To check the current value of your email options, run PROC OPTIONS with group=email:
proc options group=email; run;If the current values are not set by an administrator, you can set them within your program by using an OPTIONS statement. You might need to work with a system administrator to learn the proper values for your environment.
options
emailsys=smtp
emailhost=your.smtpemail.server.com
emailport=25;This paper (PDF) by SAS' Chuck Hunley contains a helpful guide to configuring your email options.
How to set email attributes such as Importance and Read Receipts with SAS
FILENAME EMAIL supports most of the standard email flags that you can set in full email clients. Flags such as Importance, Read Receipts, Expiration time, and Sensitivity are set with named options, documented with the FILENAME EMAIL statement.
filename mail email
from="watcher@creep.com"
to="victim@school.edu"
importance='high'
readreceipt
ct="text/html"
subject="I know what you did last summer"
sensitivity='private';
data _null_;
file mail;
put '<html><body>';
put '<h2>Uh oh</h2>';
put "<p>...and I'll keep quiet";
put "<br>for a price</p>";
put '</body></html>';
run;
How to format your email with ODS in SAS
Most email clients support rich content using HTML. By using one of the ODS HTML or HTML-like tagsets, you can create customized formatted messages that include SAS output. Remember that not every email client supports a full range of HTML structure, formatting, and behavior -- so it's wise to keep the HTML simple. However, you can easily use ODS to create the body of your message in HTML, and include tabular output such as from PROC REPORT or PROC PRINT. Use ODS TEXT statements to create additional annotations within the message.
This code example shows how to use ODS templates to adjust the structure of the simple msoffice2k tagset to create an email message that renders well in any client, including Microsoft Outlook.
ods path(prepend) work.template(update);
proc template;
define style styles.myemail;
parent=styles.seaside;
class body /
htmlstyle="border:none";
class systitleandfootercontainer /
htmlstyle="border:none";
class page /
htmlstyle="border:none";
end;run;
FILENAME OUTPUT EMAIL
SUBJECT = "blogs.sas.com: &postCount posts,
&commentCount comments"
FROM = "Chris Hemedinger <chris.blogger@sas.com>"
TO = (&toList)
CT ='text/html';
ods tagsets.msoffice2k(id=email)
file=OUTPUT(title="7-day blog report")
style=myemail;
proc report nowd data=pastweek;
title "&postCount blogs.sas.com posts";
title2 color=red "NOTE: " color=blue "View counts are sourced from Google Analytics";
columns post_date post_author blog_ID post_link ga_views comment_count ;
define post_date / group order=data 'Date posted' style(column)=[just=l];
define post_author / order 'Author' style(column)=[just=l];
...
run;
ods tagsets.msoffice2k(id=email) close;
How to send email with attachments in SAS
You can attach one or more files to your email message with the ATTACH= option on the FILENAME EMAIL statement. The file(s) to attach must be located in a folder that the SAS session can access so that they can be added to the message.
filename outbox EMAIL;
data _null_;
FILE outbox
to=("recipient@company.com" )
importance="HIGH"
sensitivity="CONFIDENTIAL"
subject="Monthly sales: Your report for June"
attach=("/home/user/sales/june_sales.xlsx"
content_type="application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet");
file outbox;
put "Attached is the report for June sales.";
put "Thank you,";
put "Sales Data Team";
run;
Email systems rely on file extensions and MIME types to determine the type of the file that's attached. To explicitly set the type, you can specify the MIME type in your program via the CONTENT_TYPE= suboption on the ATTACH option.
This video tutorial shows how to automate a set of emails to multiple recipients, including the attachment of a spreadsheet to each message:
How to send email with embedded images in SAS
An embedded image is a special type of attachment that appears in the body of the email message. Instead of an attached file, the image data is included in the message body and rendered inline by the email client (such as Microsoft Outlook or Gmail).
The ODS HTML5 destination can include images in the HTML body. When using this for email you should use JPEG or PNG images. (Scalable vector graphics or SVG is supported by HTML, but not by all email clients.)
ods graphics / imagefmt=png height=400 width=400;
filename outbox EMAIL
to="chris.h@epa.gov"
from="go.green@environment.com"
subject="Gas guzzlers"
ct="text/html";
ods html5 (id=mail) file=outbox style=pearlj
options(bitmap_mode="inline") gtitle;
title "CARS data: mpg vs HP";
proc sgplot data=sashelp.cars;
scatter x=mpg_city y=horsepower;
run;
ods html5 (id=mail) close;
If you have a standalone image file you want to include (such as a logo or banner), it's possible to reference this directly by building your own HTML. Code snippet:
filename myemail email
to="Jim@acme.com"
from="Wiley <wcoyote@acme.com>"
sender="Wiley <wcoyote@sas.com>"
attach=('C:\Public\Pictures\Sample Pictures\sasLogo.gif' NAME="sasLogo" INLINED="logo"
'C:\temp\reportToEmail.html' NAME='myreport')
subject="Embedded Image Example"
content_type="text/html";
Use the INLINE= suboption on the ATTACH option to assign a reference name to the image you want to include inline. Assuming that your email is HTML content, use this convention to reference your image:
<img src="cid:myimage"/>where "myimage" is the reference name you specified in the INLINE option.
The SAS documentation for FILENAME EMAIL includes an example for inlined images. See this article for more information and examples: Using SAS to send a graph in the body of an email.
How to send email to multiple recipients in SAS
We'll cover two use cases for sending email to multiple recipients:
- sending the same message to multiple addresses, which may come from a database, in one step
- sending a batch of messages that are customized for each recipient, using a data-driven process
Sending a single message to multiple addresses
It's common to read the email distribution list from an external source, such as Excel or CSV. In this example we have two possible lists: one for daily distribution and one for just Mondays (a wider distribution). We use the PROC SQL SELECT INTO feature to read the addresses into a macro variable, which we can reference in the FILENAME EMAIL statement:
%let cutoff = %sysfunc(today()) - 7;
/* two lists: one for Monday and one for all other days */
%let dist = %sysfunc(ifc(%sysfunc(today(),weekday1.)=2,weekly,daily));
filename dl "/u/userid/reports/distlist_&dist..csv";
data distlist;
infile dl dsd;
length email $ 50;
input email;
run;
/* create space-delimited list like: "email1" "email2" "email3" */
proc sql noprint;
select cat('"',trim(email),'"') into :toList separated by ' ' from distlist;
quit;
FILENAME OUTPUT EMAIL
SUBJECT = "Report for (%TRIM(%QSYSFUNC(putn(&cutoff., NLDATE20.))) - %TRIM(%QSYSFUNC(today(), NLDATE20.)))"
FROM = "Chris Hemedinger <myaddress@sas.com>"
TO = (&toList)
CT ='text/html';
Here's a sample message produced by this process:
Sending a customized message to multiple addresses
You can use SAS macro language to create a reusable macro routine to send a personalized email message. The CALL EXECUTE statement can run that routine for each value in a data set, creating a data-driven process to generate custom emails. This example code segment was adapted from the sample provide by Daniel Rodda in his tutorial video.
%macro sendreports(Email, Make, Model_Count);
filename outbox EMAIL;
data _null_;
FILE outbox
to=("&email" )
importance="HIGH"
sensitivity="CONFIDENTIAL"
subject="NHTSA: &make Recall"
file outbox;
put "Dear &make.,";
put;
put "National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has identified ";
put "&Model_count of your models as having potentially faulty airbags.";
put "Thank you,";
put "NHTSA Data Team";
run;
%mend sendreports;
/* In this example, car_data contains records for email, make name, and count */
/* Example:
safety@ford.com Ford 36
safety@honda.com Honda 27
...
*/
data _null_;
set car_data;
/* will send one email message per record */
call execute(cats('%sendreports(',Email,',',Make,',',Model_Count,')'));
run;Read more about data driven processes using SAS macro and CALL EXECUTE: CALL EXECUTE made easy for SAS data-driven programming.
How to send a text message using SAS
This feels a bit like cheating, but there isn't any magic function in SAS that sends SMS messages. Instead, we're going to rely on a mobile phone service trick. Most phone service providers allow you to send text messages via e-mail by using a special address scheme for the text message recipient. Each carrier is a little different, but you can find the details with a simple internet search: "sms via email".
My current carrier is AT&T, and so to receive a text message as e-mail I would send it to the address my_number@txt.att.net. With the FILENAME EMAIL method, it's easy to send an e-mail using SAS.
options emailhost='mailserver.company.com' emailsys=smtp;
/* NOT my real phone number */
filename msg email to="9198675309@txt.att.net"
FROM = "Cafe Bot <youremail@company.com>"
subject="Breakfast goodie: &Goodie.";
data _null_;
file msg;
put 'Bon appetit!';
run;
Here's an example of the text message from my phone:
Learn more in this blog article: How to send a text message from SAS.
How to use Gmail or cloud-based service to send email with SAS
You can use SAS to communicate directly with providers such as Gmail and Outlook.com, but these require additional configuration and the method has security considerations. For example, to use SAS as a client for Gmail you must first enable Less secure apps from your Google account. If you use two-factor authentication (a good practice), then you must also use an "App password" instead of your selected account credentials. Note: protect your Google credentials and/or App password! It's best practice to not code these into your programs, but secure them in a place that only you can access.
options emailhost=
(
"smtp.gmail.com"
/* alternate: port=487 SSL */
port=587 STARTTLS
auth=plain
/* your Gmail address */
id="your_address@gmail.com"
/* optional: encode PW with PROC PWENCODE */
pw="your_password"
)
;
filename myemail EMAIL
to="lucky_recipient@gmail.com"
subject="Read SAS blogs";
data _null_;
file myemail;
put "Dear Friend,";
put "I recommend that you read https://blogs.sas.com ";
put "for lots of SAS news and tips.";
run;
filename myemail clear;For more details see this article: How to use Gmail to send a message from a SAS program.
I followed your example, but i found in OutLook, the email body will be in a attachment named "ATT00001.bin" automaticly
