Keep column name when summarizing

[RyanK]

Perhaps this is a minor complaint, but I often find myself changing the names of columns after I set a summary method.  Is there a way to prevent the column name from changing from COLUMN_NAME to SUM_of_COLUMN_NAME?

While I believe I have thouroughly searched through the setting, I hold on to hope that I have overlooked it.

Thanks,

Ryan

[Reeza]

Which Task exactly are you using?

I'm not sure there's a point and click mechanism, but I know for certain you can override this with code.  

You'll find EG will get you there 90%, the remaining 10% is code 🙂

[RyanK]

This is in a simple query builder, but I would happily use another task if it would avoid the issue. I absolutely can override it with code, but was hoping to avoid that. In this case, I am aggregating 27 variables and would prefer to not type it out.

[Reeza · Accepted solution]

Query builder is straight forward, when summarizing you have a field that says Column Name that you can type whatever you want into it, as long as it's a valid name. I don't think there's a default way to specify it to stay the same variable.

The code override is relatively straightforward, as long as you're only calculating one statistic (ie mean/sum) it automatically saves with the same name. You do have to list the variables but you can use variable shortcuts.

proc means data=sashelp.class noprint;
var age weight height;
output out=want mean=;
run;

[RyanK]

Fantastic, that takes 50 lines of PROC SQL down to 5 lines of PROC MEANS.  

I was not aware of variable lists, they work perfectly in this scenario.

Thanks for your help.