Well actually, when I was trying to calculate parameters for long duration mortgages using Excel, it seemed to have a tiny problem with the dates. And dates of birth were a slight problem before 1900.

Oh, and when trying to nest If() statements to derive values I could easily derive in SAS, I was limited to 7 levels.

And it was unhappy with large amounts of data, taking a long time to load and sometimes corrupting.

Within its design limitations, Excel may "work fine", but it tends to hide bad user practices and miscoding that is a little less transparent with SAS.

It's just another tool to be employed wisely, within its capabilities.

Kind regards

David

-----Original Message----- From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Alan Churchill Sent: Wednesday, 31 January 2007 5:18 AM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: numbers "that look like" characters in Excel to SAS

Excel works fine. It is the interface between Excel and everything else that causes a problem.

If you want to work with Excel, do so in Excel or in a library specifically built for it.

SAS attempts to understand what is in a spreadsheet but it can only guess so far. Take the guesswork out by doing it directly.

Alan

Alan Churchill Savian "Bridging SAS and Microsoft Technologies" www.savian.net

-----Original Message----- From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of bob mcconnaughey Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 10:47 AM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: numbers "that look like" characters in Excel to SAS

One of the more common problems we have as more and more lab/medical/etc. data comes to epi projects as excel spreadsheets is the entry of numeric values in excel as text. There are several ways around this, all of them a greater or lesser pain... 1. In Excel, "fix" all the cells w/ the error msg "the number in this cell is formatted as text or proceeded w/ an apostrophe" 2. write it out as a *csv or *.txt file and use a good editor (Ultraedit's ability to edit columns is v. useful in this situation) and read the raw file into SAS. 3. Just bite the bullet and set up a big array of the character formatted numeric variables and a big array of new numeric variables and just use the imput function or something similar. 4. use dbmscopy and change the attributes of the variables in the conversion process there. ... What's a "nicer" solution? esp. as excel spreadsheets are often going directly to PI's who want to be able to play w/ them directly in SAS but get totally frustrated w/ the quirks of eXcel (i'll avoid getting into all the inherent data eradication problems and "desorting" datasets and all the other disasters that lurk w/out an audit trail of any kind in excel.) IMO both 9/11 and the subsequent war in Iraq were made possible via the combined evilness of excel and powerpoint. grumpily bob mcc Westat/NIEHS epidemiology support.

Bob McConnaughey Westat/NIEHS | Pittsboro, NC

"There is a great homeland of intelligence and love from which no one can be expelled" Carlos Fuentes

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