Hi:
Linus is correct. When you use ODS HTML to create an HTML file and you give that file a .XLS file extension, you are NOT exporting the file to Excel format. You are creating an HTML file that Excel knows how to open and render. Ever since Office 97, Excel has been able to open HTML files.
However, users of ODS HTML quickly learned the trick that if they named the file with a .XLS file extension, that Excel would launch from the SAS Results Window. This happens because you have fooled the Windows registry, not because you have done an export to a true, binary Excel proprietary format file.
The only mechanisms in SAS to export to Excel format are:
1) PROC EXPORT
2) Libname Excel Engine
3) SAS Add-in for Microsoft Office
and, I suppose some would say using SAS with DDE or OLE-DB. But the topic of discussion here is ODS HTML.
If you opened the HTML file (which contained output from PROC MEANS) in Excel, you would see the file in worksheet form. If you opened the HTML file with Notepad or a text editor, you would see HTML markup tags in the file.
So, if you made changes to the HTML file while in Excel and resaved it as HTML, then you might use the HTML engine to read the file back into SAS format. If you made changes to the HTML file while in Excel and resaved it as an XLS file (Office 97-2003) format, you should be able to read it with PROC IMPORT. If you made changes to the HTML file while in Excel and resaved it as an XLSX file (Office 2007 XML format), then I believe you have to use the OLE-DB engine to read the file back into SAS.
If you created the file from PROC MEANS and have not made any changes while the file has been in Excel, then Linus is correct that PROC MEANS has 2 ways to create an output data set. One way involves the OUTPUT statement inside PROC MEANS syntax and the other way involves using ODS OUTPUT to create an output data set.
But again, giving your ODS HTML file a .XLS extension is NOT doing an export to Excel format. So you must tailor your method of reading the file back into SAS (if necessary) accordingly.
cynthia