I am creating variables within a macro %do loop inside a data step, kinda like this:     %DO I = 1 %TO 5;             NEW_VAR&I. = "Hello"; %END;   This successfully creates variables named new_var1 through new_var5, all filled with “Hello.” What I’m trying to figure out is if you can do conditional formatting. For example:     %DO I = 1 %TO 5;             IF &I. < 5 THEN DO;                   NEW_VAR&I. = "12/12/2010";  * This automatically makes the variables type CHAR;             END;             IF &I. = 5 THEN DO;                   NEW_VAR&I. = 18608; * the number equivalent of the date I want;                   FORMAT NEW_VAR&I. MMDDYY10.; * I want new_var5 to be a different format than the others;             END;       %END;   This gives me the error: “The format $MMDDYY was not found or could not be loaded.”   This seemingly would only arise if NEW_VAR5 was somehow already defined as CHAR.  It appears that NEW_VAR5 is already initialized deep in SAS somewhere with a CHAR format, which is causing me issues. I tried doing MACRO %IF statements instead, which actually does solve this problem, but the reason I don’t want to switch to MACRO IF statements is because functions like %ANYALPHA don’t exist in natural SAS macro functions (unlike %UPCASE(), %SUBSTR(), etc).   Any ideas for how to solve this problem? Thanks! ... View more