By default, Proc Import uses the first 20 rows of the dataset to determine the length of the variables. If your memo field doesn't have any content for the first few records, SAS might assume that the field is short. You can try using the guessingrows option in proc import to increase the number of rows SAS uses to determine the variable size. Just add the following statement somewhere after the import statement (I used 100 rows as an example, but this can be anything): guessingrows=100; If you really want to control the size of the variable, though, you'll probably have to use a data step instead of Proc Import.
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