Thanks Chris, I have been testing ODS this morning and a small mysterious mistake takes me a lot of time, though I thought it should not be the problem. The testing code is as following: ods output "Parameter Estimates"=parest; proc reg data=hsb25 noprint;   model write = female math; run; quit; ods output close; proc print data=parest; run; With the NOPRINT option inside the PROC REG, any names other than PAREST will not generate the output data set. Finally I found the following from SAS user guide : "Many SAS procedures support a NOPRINT option that you can use when you want to create an output data set but without displaying any output....However, if you specify the NOPRINT option, the procedure might not send any output to ODS. In most procedures that support a NOPRINT option, NOPRINT means no ODS " ... View more