Reading Data

Introduction#

Reading data into a SAS dataset can be accomplished using multiple approaches including the datalines statement, from an external file using an infile statement in the data step, or reading data from an external file using proc import. In addition you can read in data from external sources that are odbc compliant (e.g. SQL databases) using the odbc drivers.

Read text file with comma delimiter

DATA table-name;
    INFILE "file-path/file-name.csv" dsd;
    INPUT Name $ City $ Age;
RUN;

Read data from excel file

PROC IMPORT DATAFILE = "file-path/file-name.xlsx" OUT=data_set DBMS=XLSX REPLACE;

PROC IMPORT for Excel, importing a specific sheet

There will be times where you only want to import a specific sheet from an excel file with multiple sheets. To do that, we’ll use ”SHEET=“.

PROC IMPORT 
    OUT= YourNewTable
    DATAFILE= "myfolder/excelfilename.xlsx" 
    DBMS=xlsx 
    REPLACE;
    SHEET="Sheet1";
    GETNAMES=YES;
RUN;

Also take note of the ability to specify whether or not the top row imported contains column names or not (GETNAMES=YES (or NO).