You should probably ask them to remake the file.   It was probably a user error that attached an invalid format specification to the variable.   There is really no need to attach any INFORMAT to variables that are already in a dataset.  The INFORMAT is used when converting values from text, like when reading in data from a text file.  So it will not be used at all when reading in data from an existing dataset.   And there is usually never any need to use an INFORMAT that has decimal places specified.  That is only used when you want SAS to imply a decimal point for characters strings that do not have one.  It was common in the old days to save one character when punching your data onto 80 column cards. ... View more