Date:         Fri, 21 Sep 2007 13:42:13 -0700
Reply-To:     "Pardee, Roy" <pardee.r@GHC.ORG>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Pardee, Roy" <pardee.r@GHC.ORG>
Subject:      Re: How to make Excel treat a numeric like a character
In-Reply-To:  A<005101c7fc89$d1d513f0$0815c79d@wks.tsh.thomson.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Try prepending a single quote character to your values, e.g., '04244.

-----Original Message-----
From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Bruce J
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 12:59 PM
To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: How to make Excel treat a numeric like a character

Hi!  I'm hoping that this is an easy one...

I have a table that has a field that is filled with numbers, but needs
to be stored as a character field, because of valid leading zeros.  My
problem comes when I try converting this file into Excel.  When Excel
sees a number, it automatically converts the column to a number.  What
can I use to avoid this "feature"?  We don't have Access for PC File
Formats installed on our server, so I can't use that.  I'm trying to use
ODS.

Here is a sample of code:

data sales;
 length zip $5 sales 8;
 input zip $ sales;
 cards;
 10213 44943934
 04244 43431331
 08532 24985771
 90201 69492134
 ;
run;
ods html file="c:\temp\sales.xls";
proc print data=sales;
run;
ods html close;