Making a SYLK file from SAS data. Another way to Excel using SAS

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1 Making a SYLK file from SAS data or Another way to Excel using SAS Cynthia A. Stetz, Acceletech, Bound Brook, NJ ABSTRACT Transferring data between SAS and other applications engages most of us at least some of the time. So we re always looking for an easier way to do it. Among SAS programmers who provide data to information consumers one of the most often requested formats is the Excel spreadsheet. Over the years SAS has made various methods available for transferring data to Excel, among them Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), and most recently Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). We ve also been able to create a CSV (Comma Separated Value) or otherwise delimited text file, but these always required the use of the Excel Import Wizard, which can be quite time consuming if you have a lot of columns. Now, through the use of the SAS ODS Markup statement and a user-defined TAGSET, we can direct output from a SAS procedure to a filetype that Excel recognizes - a Spreadsheet SYmbolic LinK, or SYLK file. This paper will explain the relationship between a SAS procedure and ODS events, and how a tagset creates the specified format. We will also look at the contents of the SYLK file and the resulting Excel spreadsheet. Most importantly, we will show you how to use Proc Template to define a SYLK tagset and how you can use the tagset with a SAS procedure to create a SYLK file. This paper is based on Jack Hamilton s definition of the SYLK tagset, which is available on the SAS website. INTRODUCTION Originally the only output you could get with SAS was SAS datasets or listings, and not every procedure created a dataset or had that as an option. This led to some very creative SAS programs being written to circumnavigate this limitation. Then, SAS introduced the Output Delivery System (ODS) in version 7. It allows you to send output from any SAS procedure to one or more output destinations, such as RTF, PDF, and HTML. Now SAS has introduced the ODS Markup statement, which allows for more destinations to be defined using the TAGSET= option. This new feature is experimental in Version 8.2 and production in Version 9. SAS V8.2 ships with a number of pre-defined tagsets such as XML, CSV, and WML. Version 9 expands the number of SAS defined tagsets to a dizzying array! Please read the document Using ODS to Export Output in a Markup Language on the SAS website for a more extensive explanation of these capabilities and a full list of tagsets available in each version. You can get a list of currently available tagsets by running the following SAS statements: 1

2 Proc template; list tagsets; For further expandability, ODS Markup also allows for user-defined tagsets. You can modify an existing tagset definition or build one from the ground up based on a procedure s event map. The rest of this paper is going to explore the creation and usage of a user-defined tagset for creating SYLK files. WHAT IS A SYLK FILE? A Spreadsheet SYmbolic LinK file is basically an ASCII text file containing commands that Excel recognizes and can build a spreadsheet from. It is rather sparse and cryptic in form. The SYLK tagset as defined in this paper uses a small fraction of the SYLK fields available. You can find a summary of all currently used SYLK fields and a complete explanation of SYLK files at this website, under the heading Spreadsheet/Database: In brief, all SYLK files start with an ID record and have some format records that define the number and size of the columns. These are followed by the cell definition records. The cell definition records determine the actual cell contents, be it column headings or data values. The last record is the end of file record. The order of the records is vital; Excel will not be able to create the spreadsheet correctly if they are out of order. Each record has a record type descriptor, an optional field type descriptor and an optional and variable number of data items. Field type descriptors are preceded by semicolons. Since the tagset will be writing the SYLK file records for us, we do not have to worry about getting the syntax right. Semicolons embedded in text values are not allowed since they are used as part of the field type descriptor. If your data may contain semicolons, the best way to handle it is to translate them to another character such as a comma. Please see Appendix A for an example of a SYLK file. SAS PROCEDURES, ODS, TEMPLATES, AND STYLES All SAS procedures invoke the Output Delivery System (ODS) whether there are any ODS statements in effect or not. The default ODS destination is SAS listing output. Many other output destinations are available simply by adding an ODS statement before your procedure, and specifying what type of output you want. In this way you can get HTML, RTF, PDF or any one (or more) of the output destinations SAS currently supports via templates and styles. Here is an example of an ODS statement that will produce HTML output using the FancyPrinter style: ods html file='h:\njsug04\example2html.htm' style=fancyprinter; SAS manages the tagset definitions for these destinations for you under the covers. You can accomplish a great deal of customization using styles and modifying style elements without ever dealing with the underlying tagset definitions. 2

3 WHAT IS A TAGSET? If the output destination you want is not covered by any of the SAS pre-defined ones, then you may have to resort to building your own tagset. A TAGSET is a type of template that defines how to generate a markup language output type from SAS data. In other words it is a set of instructions for what the Output Delivery System should do when each EVENT initiated by a procedure occurs. Every element of the output from a procedure is connected to an event, or action. Starting and ending a document, writing titles/footnotes/headers, changing font type/font size/colors/spacing and writing data values are all examples of events. In order for a tagset to produce the desired output file format, it must recognize each event and know how to react to it. This is a non-linear process. If you were to write your own tagset from scratch, you would start by finding out the events for which you need to write tagset commands. To do this, you would run the SAS procedure using tagset=event_map. The only output you will get is the event map. An example of this and a partial listing of the resulting event map are in Appendix B. I think you ll agree that creating a tagset from an event map looks like quite a daunting and cumbersome task! If you are interested in a more extensive explanation of tagsets and events, please refer to the document Creating Customized Tagsets to Use with ODS and XML LIBNAME Engine which can be found in the ODS MARKUP Resources section of the Base SAS Community Home website (support.sas.com > Communities > Base). Although it focuses on XML it also gives a full explanation of events and tagsets. DEFINING AND USING THE SYLK TAGSET We are not going to create a tagset from scratch. Instead, we are going to use the SYLK tagset that was created by Jack Hamilton of First Health in West Sacramento, CA. You can find this tagset and others contributed by SAS customers by going to the support.sas.com webpage and clicking on ODS Resources/ODS MARKUP/Customer-Contributed Tagsets. I ve also included the Proc Template code containing the SYLK tagset written by Jack in APPENDIX C. If you will look at the sample SYLK file in Appendix A and the tagset definition in Appendix C, you will see the connection between the events being handled by the tagset and the resulting SYLK file records. For example, the define event doc issues the ID record at the start of a document and the E record at the finish. Similarly, the define event colspecs triggers the output of the column width record. The number of columns comes from the colcount variable, which is set by the executing SAS procedure. In order to make any user-defined tagset available to ODS, you must run Proc Template to define the tagset. If you are familiar with the SAS macro language, it s quite similar to compiling a macro before you can invoke it. By default, Proc Template stores user-defined tagsets in your SASUSER.TEMPLAT item store. SAS supplied tagsets are stored in your SASHELP.TMPLMST item store. You can browse tagsets in either of these locations from your RESULTS window by right-clicking on RESULTS and choosing TEMPLATES from the drop down menu. Once you run the Proc Template step you can use the SYLK tagset in the current and subsequent SAS sessions. You do not need to run it each time you want to use it. The definition is persistent as long as the SASUSER.TEMPLAT folder you saved it in is available to the SAS session. You can also store the proc template code in a file and use %INCLUDE to bring it into your programs, or simply cut and paste the proc template statements into your code prior to the ODS statement that invokes the template. 3

4 To use the tagset, simply specify it on an ODS markup statement and then run your SAS procedure. This paper is not a tutorial on using ODS; many papers are available on that topic in previous SAS conference proceedings and on the SAS website. Therefore we assume some familiarity with basic ODS statements, such as starting and ending a destination. A reminder: it is a good idea to close the listing destination whenever you don t need it, and then re-open it when you re done using the alternate destination, as this will conserve resources. Here is an example of creating a SYLK file using Proc Report and one of the SAS supplied datasets, class. In this example we are limiting our output to just females over 5 ft tall, and we are including a summary of our analysis variables at the end of the report. The SYLK file in Appendix A was created from these statements. ods markup body='h:\nesug04\class60f.slk' tagset=tagsets.sylk; proc report data=sashelp.class(where=(height gt 60 and sex = 'F')) nowindows; column name sex age height weight; define name / width=8 ; define sex / width=3 ; define age / analysis format=6.2 mean; define height / analysis format=6.2 mean; define weight / analysis format=6.2 mean; rbreak after / skip ol summarize; compute after ; name = 'AVG'; endcomp; You can run the procedure and create the SYLK file on any platform, whether Excel is available or not. I use this technique extensively on our UNIX server. You can then move the file to wherever you have Excel, double click on the file, and it will open formatted as an Excel spreadsheet. You can then save it as an.xls file. From an open Excel session, if you scroll down in the Files of Type window you will see an entry for SYLK files near the end of the list. Appendix E contains a print of the spreadsheet created from the above SAS statements. Please note that the tagset treats all data as text, so in order to use the contents of the cells as numeric, you need to convert them. This is easily done by multiplying the cells by 1. Although the example here uses Proc Report you are not limited to just that procedure. Other procedures I have created SYLK files from include Proc Print, Proc Contents and Proc Freq, both one-way and two-way frequencies using the list option. Examples of these programs are included in Appendix F, and a sample of output from the two-way frequency is shown in Appendix G. Other procedures may not work with this tagset if they trigger events for which there is no definition. There must be a define event block in the tagset for every action the procedure is capable of invoking, or that output element will be missing from the SYLK file. If you include titles and footnotes in your Proc Report you will notice they are not included in the SYLK file. The tagset does not handle them so they are ignored for this output destination. 4

5 CONCLUSION The primary goal of this paper has been to give you a tool, the SYLK tagset, with which you can more easily port SAS output to Excel. With the tagset definition and the examples included here, you should be well on your way to accomplishing that task. If you have also gained some understanding of the relationship between SAS procedures, events, ODS, and tagsets, we ll consider that a bonus. I hope you find this technique as useful as I have. REFERENCES Support.sas.com > communities > base > ODS resources > Spreadsheet/Database > pg2 > SYLK ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Great thanks to Jack Hamilton of First Health in West Sacramento, CA for writing the SYLK tagset definition and posting it on the SAS website. CONTACT INFORMATION Your comments and questions are welcomed and encouraged. Contact the author at: Cynthia A. Stetz Acceletech 326 Longwood Ave. Bound Brook, NJ Work Phone: Cynthia_stetz@ml.com TRADEMARKS SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies. 5

6 APPENDIX A SYLK file example ID;PSAS8 P;F P;F;SB F;W F;SDM1;Y1;X1 C;Y1;X1;K"Name" F;SDM1;Y1;X2 C;Y1;X2;K"Sex" F;SDM1;Y1;X3 C;Y1;X3;K"Age" F;SDM1;Y1;X4 C;Y1;X4;K"Height" F;SDM1;Y1;X5 C;Y1;X5;K"Weight" C;Y2;X1;K"Barbara" C;Y2;X2;K"F" C;Y2;X3;K" 13.00" C;Y2;X4;K" 65.30" C;Y2;X5;K" 98.00" C;Y3;X1;K"Carol" C;Y3;X2;K"F" C;Y3;X3;K" 14.00" C;Y3;X4;K" 62.80" C;Y3;X5;K"102.50" C;Y4;X1;K"Janet" C;Y4;X2;K"F" C;Y4;X3;K" 15.00" C;Y4;X4;K" 62.50" C;Y4;X5;K"112.50" C;Y5;X1;K"Judy" C;Y5;X2;K"F" C;Y5;X3;K" 14.00" C;Y5;X4;K" 64.30" C;Y5;X5;K" 90.00" C;Y6;X1;K"Mary" C;Y6;X2;K"F" C;Y6;X3;K" 15.00" C;Y6;X4;K" 66.50" C;Y6;X5;K"112.00" C;Y7;X1;K"AVG" C;Y7;X2;K"" C;Y7;X3;K" 14.20" C;Y7;X4;K" 64.28" C;Y7;X5;K"103.00" E 6

7 APPENDIX B Displaying a Procedure s event map Run the procedure specifying the event_map tagset: ods markup file='h:\nesug04\eventmap.txt' type=event_map; proc report data=sashelp.class(where=(height gt 60 and sex = 'F')) nowindows; column name sex age height weight; define name / width=8 ; define sex / width=3 ; define age / analysis mean; define height / analysis mean; define weight / analysis mean; rbreak after / skip ol summarize; compute after ; name = 'AVG'; endcomp; This is a partial listing of the resulting event map: <doc_head event_name="doc_head" trigger_name="attr_out" class="body" index="idx" just="c"> <doc_meta event_name="doc_meta" trigger_name="attr_out" class="body" index="idx" just="c"/> <auth_oper event_name="auth_oper" trigger_name="attr_out" class="body" index="idx" just="c"/> <doc_title event_name="doc_title" trigger_name="attr_out" class="body" index="idx" just="c"/> <code_link event_name="code_link" trigger_name="attr_out" index="idx" just="c"/> </doc_head> <doc_body event_name="doc_body" trigger_name="attr_out" class="body" index="idx" just="c"> <proc event_name="proc" trigger_name="attr_out" index="idx" just="c"> <anchor event_name="anchor" trigger_name="attr_out" class="body" name="idx" index="idx" just="c"/> <system_title event_name="system_title" trigger_name="attr_out" class="systemtitle" value="the SAS System" index="idx" just="c"/> <branch event_name="branch" trigger_name="attr_out" class="contentprocname" value="report" index="idx" just="c" url="h:\nesug04\eventmap.txt#idx" hreftarget="body"> <leaf event_name="leaf" trigger_name="attr_out" class="contentitem" value="detailed and/or summarized report" index="idx" just="c" url="h:\nesug04\eventmap.txt#idx" hreftarget="body"> <table event_name="table" trigger_name="attr_out" class="table" type="table" index="idx" just="c"> continues for over 150 additional lines 7

8 APPENDIX C Proc Template to define the SYLK tagset proc template; define tagset tagsets.sylk; indent = 0; map='"'; mapsub='/""/'; define event doc; start: put 'ID;PSAS8' nl; put 'P;F' nl; put 'P;F;SB' nl; finish: put 'E' nl; end; define event put_value; put value; end; define event colspecs; start: put 'F;W1 ' colcount ' 20' nl; end; define event header; start: put 'F;SDM1;Y' row ';X' colstart nl; put 'C;Y' row ';X' colstart; put ';K"'; put value; finish: put '"'; put nl; end; define event data; start: /* Header section (column headers are bold) */ put 'F;SDM1;Y' row ';X' colstart nl / cmp(section, "head"); /* Always */ put 'C;Y' row ';X' colstart; put ';K"'; put value; finish: put '"'; put nl; end; end; 8

9 APPENDIX D Proc Report output to SYLK file ods markup body='h:\nesug04\class60f.slk' tagset=tagsets.sylk; proc report data=sashelp.class(where=(height gt 60 and sex = 'F')) nowindows; column name sex age height weight; define name / width=8 ; define sex / width=3 ; define age / analysis format=6.2 mean; define height / analysis format=6.2 mean; define weight / analysis format=6.2 mean; rbreak after / skip ol summarize; compute after ; name = 'AVG'; endcomp; 9

10 Appendix E: Excel spreadsheet contents created by program in Appendix D Name Sex Age Height Weight Barbara F Carol F Janet F Judy F Mary F AVG

11 Appendix F: Examples of using the SYLK tagset with various procedures ods markup body='h:\nesug04\class60fprint.slk' tagset=tagsets.sylk; proc print data=sashelp.class noobs; var name sex age height weight; ods markup body='h:\nesug04\class60fcontents.slk' tagset=tagsets.sylk; proc contents data=sashelp.class ; ods markup body='h:\nesug04\class60ffreq1.slk' tagset=tagsets.sylk; proc freq data=sashelp.class ; tables age / missing; ods markup body='h:\nesug04\class60ffreq2.slk' tagset=tagsets.sylk; proc freq data=sashelp.class ; tables age*sex / list missing; 11

12 Appendix G: Example of Two-Way Frequency output in Excel spreadsheet Age Sex Frequency Percent Cumulative Frequency Cumulative Percent 11 F M F M F M F M F M M