Excel Document Not Opening with X Commands

[acooper]

Hello There,

I am attempting to open up an excel document using an x command. I am currently not getting any errors, the code is running to completion, however, nothing is happening upon completion of the code.

The document lives on a shared directory, and is in a virtual environment. We are not sure if either of these are causing the issue. Other x commands are functioning (creating or deleting items), so we can at least confirm that the xcmd functionality is working.

Any recommendations would be highly appreciated.

Thanks!

Code used below:

proc options option=xcmd; run;

options noxwait noxsync;

x '"directory\x_experiments\DelimitedExample"';

[Reeza]

Did you test your x command in a command window? That doesn't look correct to open an XLSX file, there's no file extension for one or a filename.

[acooper]

Howdy!

the file name is included (DelimitedExample). I had seen the extension left off in other threads, so I had left it off in my experiments to get it to work.

playing around with the command prompt now to try and get it to work in a different file first. would I be using .exe or .xlsx?

thank you!

[SASKiwi]

Where is your SAS program running? This will only work if it is running on your PC. If the program is running on a remote SAS server, then you can't start a local Excel session from there.

[acooper]

okay, that may unfortunately be (one of) the issues. Our system is running on a virtual environment and not on the main computer.

as noted earlier, other x commands are working correctly (creating or destroying folders and txt documents), is there a way to tell which x commands would or would not work on a virtual environment?

[Reeza]

The x commands are executed in the virtual environment and will only affect the VM. Anything locally will not be accessible.

[acooper]

that is fine, I don't need to open anything on the local machine, im trying to open a document that also lives in the virtual environment.

[SASKiwi · Accepted solution]

As long as you are logging on to a Windows session on your virtual PC, then running SAS within this session then opening an Excel session should work. In essence Excel needs a display, virtual or real, to successfully start. No display, no Excel. This is different from using SAS to read or write Excel workbooks. In this case you aren't using Excel sessions. 

[acooper]

thank you!

I will continue to play around with it and return if I am still having issues.

[Reeza]

Your slashes indicate unix, are you working on a unix machine and does it have Excel installed?

[acooper]

excel is installed, this is being run on windows, not unix. what would you change in the formatting?

thanks!

[ballardw]

FWIW when I run

x 'x:\data\junk.xlsx';

the desired file opens. This is running SAS locally on a Windows10 machine.

No file extension, i.e. the XLSX part and the only thing that happens is a command prompt window opening.