How to import External Data from Excel or Text file into SAS Programming?
PROC IMPORT: It is a procedure to import external files into SAS. It automates importing process. There is no need to specify the variable type and variable-length to import an external file. It supports various formats of files such as excel, txt, etc.
- Importing an Excel File into SAS:
The main keywords used in the following program are:
- OUT: To specify name of a data set that SAS creates. In the program below, outdata is the data set saved in work library (temporary library)
- DBMS: To specify the type of data to import.
- REPLACE: To overwrite an existing SAS data set.
- SHEET: To import a specific sheet from an excel workbook.
- GETNAMES: To include variable names from the first row of data.
SQL
PROC IMPORT DATAFILE= "c:\shubh\gfg.xls" OUT = outdata DBMS=xls REPLACE ; SHEET= "Sheet1" ; GETNAMES=YES; RUN |
Input:
Output:
Importing a Delimited File with TXT extension:
- To get comma separated file with a txt extension into SAS, specify delimiter = ‘, ‘
- To get space separated file with a txt extension into SAS, specify delimiter = ‘ ‘
- To get tab separated file with a txt extension into SAS, specify delimiter = ’09’x
SQL
PROC IMPORT DATAFILE= "c:\shubh\gfg.txt" OUT = outdata DBMS=dlm REPLACE ; delimiter= ', ' ; GETNAMES=YES; RUN; |
Input:
Output: