Stacking different excels of same data into one sheet

[dstevens32]

I have 250 excel files of sec financial data that I am trying to stack into one master sheet of data. However, when I go to do this there is a discrepancy in variable types across the data. For example(hypothetical), column 3 will be the date filed and in some of the files it reads in as numeric and others it will read in as a character variable. This is causing issues whenever I goto stack the files. Any suggestions on what I should do?

[Reeza]

Convert your Excel files to CSV, read them in with the same data step, which allows you specify the variable types consistently.

If they're all in the same folder something like this code will convert all in batch.
https://gist.github.com/statgeek/878e585102c14e01581f55dbe972d27e

[Kurt_Bremser]

Concur with @Reeza 's suggestion. You will only be able to make this a stable process by eliminating the Excel file format as a transfer medium.

Save to CSV and read with a data step.