I would guess that somewhere in your datastep you are defining the column for your date as a character field.  Remove the commented line below to duplicate your issue.  You will have to review your code since it is not shared. data foo; *length extract_end_dte $20; input @ 51 agency                   $4.        @ 55 data_series              $4.        @ 59 version_num               3.        @ 62 extract_typ              $1.        @ 63 extract_end_dte  ?? yymmdd8.        @ 71 extract_end_time ??   time8.        @ 79 number_of_b               5.        @ 84 data_type                $4. ; cards; 00000000000000000080000000000000000000000000000000ABCDXYZA001D2012051019:03:4900397TEST ; run; ... View more