Problem with variable type - Import from Excel

[Crommunist]

Hello all,

I am importing data from an Excel file. Many variables in my dataset contain mostly blank cells, with only a few containing numbers. However, when I import these variables into SAS, they are automatically encoded as character variables rather than numeric. This means that I cannot add them together, or perform any number of other necessary tasks. I am not sure how to resolve this issue - I have tried creating a "copy" of the variables in a data step (i.e., create a second variable that is equal to the first one when the first one is greater than zero) but because it's seeing character instead of numeric, that's not working at all.

Is there a way to tell SAS to treat a variable as a numeric rather than a character, or does the problem have to be solved before importing?

Thanks!

- Ian Cromwell

Vancouver, Canada

[AncaTilea]

Hi Ian,

there has been discussion on numeric to character variables as one imports from Excel into SAS.

Please see below this discussion:

Best of luck!

Anca.

[Linlin]

Hi,

You can create numeric variable after importing:

data have;

set have;

num_variable=cha_variable*1;

run;