Sounds like you want the PROC FORMAT option NOTSORTED combined with with ORDER=DATA.  Consider the following code. Proc Format;    Value $nia(notsorted)       "NIA Lvl 1"= "NIA 1"       "NIA Lvl 2"="NIA  2"       "NIA Lvl 3"="NIA 3"       "NIA X" = "NIA XYZ"       "NIA O"= "NIA Old"       "NIA No"="NIA None"       "NIA Miss"="NIA Missing"    ;    Run; data test;    length nia $16;    nia = "NIA Lvl 1";    output;    run; proc summary data=test nway completetypes;    class nia / preloadfmt order=data;    format nia $nia.;    output out=example / levels;    run; proc print;    run; ... View more