ERROR: Attempt to reference a page past end-of-file

[smg3141]

Hello,

I am encountering an error I have not seen before. I am getting this error after double clicking on the file in my file explorer. I was sent six SAS datasets that are all similar and two of them are producing this error, the others open normally. I have plenty of disk space, have restarted everything and redownloaded the datasets. Any thoughts on what to do? Thank you!

[ballardw]

Did you assign a library to folder with those data sets before attempting to open them? If not that may help or may allow more options to examine them.

[smg3141]

Thanks for the reply, I hadn't tried that. Still getting the error though. These are the errors I got when I tried to run a proc contents on the file and just double clicking in the file explorer after assigning the library.

[ballardw]

Long shot here: what version of SAS are you running? And is it 32-bit?

If you are running SAS 9.3 or earlier it may be having difficulties with reading one of the header record values to accommodate larger data sets.

Run this code:

proc options option=extendobscounter;run;

If you get a message that the option doesn't exist (SAS 9.3 and earlier I think) that could be the problem: version of SAS.

If the log shows it is set to NO instead of Yes like this

 EXTENDOBSCOUNTER=YES
                   Specifies whether to extend the maximum number of observations in a new SAS
                   data file.

you might be able to address this problem by setting the sytem option to EXTENDOBSCOUNTER=YES using the Options statement. As I say, this is sort of a long-shot.

[Tom]

Usually that means the file is corrupted. Perhaps you copied it from somewhere and only part of the file actually made it.

[Sajid01 · Accepted solution]

Datasets may be corrupted as pointed  by @Tom Try repairing the datasets as follows

proc datasets lib=Your_library;
   repair the_corrupt_file;
run;
quit;

Your_library is the libname of the location where corrupt file exists.

the_corrupt_file is the name of the corrupt dataset.

[smg3141]

I was able to open the datasets after running this code, but I lost some of the data. I believe the datasets that were sent to me were corrupt on the sender's end. Thanks for your help!