Include the NOTAB option in your file statement and you shouldn't have a problem.
If you do, post your code.
It looks like you want to write those variable names as column headers to the Excel table. In this case the name literals don't make sense. Please try this:
if _n_ = 1 then put 'report month' '09'x 'claim count';
If something doesn't work, please provide more details (log messages, the output you get, ...)
Don't use DDE - its old (very), and not supported, plus doesn't work on some setups. Plus you have all the limitations associated with Excel 95. Why do you need to use it? Proc export works ok, then there is tagsets.excelxp, which allows a lot of customisation even if it does create XML rather than a native XML XLSX file. Then there is libname to Excel, then there is CSV, ... in fact there are so many options which are better than DDE.
Don't use blanks in variable names. Use the labels for descriptive text, and put those in your output when necessary.
Blanks in identifiers (variable names, file names etc) only cause additional work, make programs less readable and serve no purpose.
Are you ready for the spotlight? We're accepting content ideas for SAS Innovate 2025 to be held May 6-9 in Orlando, FL. The call is open until September 25. Read more here about why you should contribute and what is in it for you!
Learn how use the CAT functions in SAS to join values from multiple variables into a single value.
Find more tutorials on the SAS Users YouTube channel.