Thank  you, ScottBass.   As Tom said, any format which appears in the Excel 2003 XML seems to work adding ;@ in the end of the format to indicate Excel one is defining a custom format, and it seems escaping with \ is never needed that way.   I posted some examples, and even choosing the locale/language works. ... View more

Maybe Scott refered to something like this, which I usually use for adapting dates to Excel format and somehow prefer as more beautiful:   DATA WPolSummary0 (DROP=state_old); length state $5.; SET rateBusPack rateISR rateBW (RENAME=(state=state_old)) rateCAR ; state=state_old; RUN; Cheers! (Is this actually used as a "goodbye"? Best wishes or best regards maybe sounds  like "too much" here ^^) ... View more