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:

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.

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: