Importing formats from SAS Base to SAS Enterprise Guide

[Raquell]

Hi All!

The company I work for recently moved from SAS Base to SAS EG 8.2. We work with a lot of formats, and have an extensive format catalog from SAS Base.

Is there anyway to import these formats into SAS EG without having to recreate them with the Create Format tasks available?

Thanks!

[Reeza]

You can put them into a catalog and move them over, but you just need to make sure they're the same bitness. An easier method that's more robust is to use the CNTLOUT on the PROC FORMAT to generate the formats, move that data set to your new system and use CNTLIN to recreate all your formats in your new library.

[Raquell]

Thanks!

[ChrisHemedinger]

You should not have to move any formats just to use SAS Enterprise Guide.  EG is just a client that connects to SAS, and SAS is the tool that accesses your formats.

Your change might also involve a switch in where your SAS is installed though.  For example, from Base SAS on Windows to a central environment on Unix.  In that case, your SAS formats (and any other SAS catalog resource) need to be migrated.  You can use PROC MIGRATE or PROC CPORT/CIMPORT for this.  

Once migrated, your formats need to be in your OPTIONS FMTSEARCH path -- and SAS and EG will just find them.

@Reeza has good advice about preserving the format definitions as data -- this makes it easier to recreate the formats in different environments.  You'll also be able to view format definitions in EG with the Catalog and Format Explorer.

[Raquell]

Hi @ChrisHemedinger ,

thanks for the reply.

SAS Eg is on a new server, and we had to remove the SAS Base connection altogether as the version we had was not compatible with SAS EG. Unfortunately I just have the catalog - no code or the data for  the formats. As there are a few hundred formats we use, I was trying to avoid having to export them all into a data format to then import them back in...

I'll try the PROC options.

Thanks!