Transcoding help needed (I think)

[PaigeMiller]

We access a database via SAS, we work with a variable that is numeric and has format date9. and is listed as Transcode='No'. A contractor who works in some other part of the world (I really don't know where) access the same database via SAS and this exact same variable is listed as Text and Transcode='Yes'. How can this happen, and more importantly, how do we fix this?