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:

  1. 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)

  2. DBMS: To specify the type of data to import.

  3. REPLACE: To overwrite an existing SAS data set.

  4. SHEET: To import a specific sheet from an excel workbook.

  5. GETNAMES: To include variable names from the first row of data.

  
  

  
  
  

  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 delimeter = ‘, ‘

  • To get space separated file with a txt extension into SAS, specify delimeter = ‘ ‘

  • To get tab separated file with a txt extension into SAS, specify delimeter = ’09’x

  
  

  
  
  

  PROC IMPORT DATAFILE= "c:\shubh\gfg.txt" OUT= outdata DBMS=dlm REPLACE; delimiter=', '; GETNAMES=YES; RUN;

  Input:
  

  Output: