I figured it . The upper case 'I' was the lower case 'l' (L). I dropped the variable and it works fine. Thanks! ... View more

I agree with both of you. I checked the spellings of the variables . There is uppercase 'I' and looked to see if it is a '1' and it is not. The thing is when I try to stack the datasets , inspite of getting the lengths uniform on the variable txtcmmnt it gives me a warning message: WARNING: Multiple lengths were specified for the variable txtCmmnt by input data set(s). This can cause          truncation of data The new lengths get applied only to the variable with the label. Have you come across something like this? Also, @RW9, the dataset looks like this ID txtcmmnt txtcmmnt 1 eerrr   2 rrrrr   3 ttttt r ... View more

I thought the same so I did a proc content to carefully check the spellings: This is an example of what shows up in the proc contents: Variable     Type    Length    Format    Informat    Label Txtcmmnt   Char    1754                                       1. Is there anything you would like to add? Txtcmmnt   Char    146                       $146     Its the second one with no label that I would like to delete. Any suggestions? ... View more

Please ignore my alst question. Thanks for your help. ... View more

Thanks. Then I will make sure to have it. I have one more question. For the variable 'title' with the format...I have to run the proc format statement first. Say the format name for it is 'west'. After I run the proic format then only I am able to open the sas dataset in lib=work. If not it triggers a message saying NOTE: Format WEST was not found or could not be loaded. NOTE: There were 437 observations read from the data set WORK.ORIGINAL. NOTE: The data set WORK.TEMP has 437 observations and 1 variables. NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):       real time           0.01 seconds       cpu time            0.01 seconds   When I run a proc contents on work.temp I see the format 'west' listed against the vairiable 'title'. However, when I look at the column attributes of the variable in the dataset, the format is listed as BESTX12.   What is 'bestx12.' ? Please let me know. ... View more

The unformatetd varibale is not present for this variable in the dataset. That's the reason for my concern. I will have to create a new one representing the unformatted one and then transfer. Would that be a good step? ... View more

@Reeza,  I am working in sas. ... View more