Thank you very much for the detailed explanation Tom, this was very helpful. I now created one library in the beginning of the Sas script and used that same library for all the .sav files I import. If I understand it correctly it will then reuse formats that are the same between two spss files and make new ones for new formats. Before exporting I used FMTSEARCH option and the labels are now coming out correct! I couldn't figure out at first how to use the FMTLIB statement in proc import but I managed with this link: https://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=acpcref&docsetTarget=n1h6b01uh0dm2yn1fpq85gjgwcfs.htm&docsetVersion=9.4&locale=en#n1gy2zfmwphcjen1uyrvkxlaqcq0 I'm foreseeing that I will have to keep using Sas to merge and filter SPSS files so I was quite desperate when I noticed this error, I'm happy it's solved now!
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