Hi:
My memory is that ODS PDF can only have 1 color for the background in a cell, so do not think your backgroundcolor=yellow is going to work. You can however italicize, bold and change the size and foreground color for just part of the text within 1 cell as shown below.
I did simplify your code a bit and I changed from the original style ODS ESCAPECHAR to the most current (SAS 9.2) "ESCAPECHAR function" format for using ODS ESCAPECHAR. Everything except backgroundcolor worked for me. I had to doctor my screen shot and make the full text of the paragraph smaller, so it would fit in the screen shot.
If you really need the background color for your sentence to be yellow, I don't think you can do that with PDF.
Cynthia
... View more