You can force SAS to read them as text using the DBSASTYPE option. It's something like this: proc import file="whatever.xls" data=whatever dbms=excel replace; dbdsopts=(dbsastype("var1='NUMERIC(8)' var2='CHAR(3)')); run;

I don't tend to remember the exact combination of ( and = and " for this, so the above is probably slightly off, but you can google it and get the right combination, or when I get into work i'll look at some code I have that does it properly.

-Joe

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 7:44 AM, Jeff Kroll <jeffrey.kroll@us.ing.com>wrote:

> I have multiple spreadsheets Im importing. On one of the spreadsheets a > column is all numbers on other spreadsheets its mixed. When I bring these > together I get an error saying the field has been defined as both numeric > and character. On the spreadsheet that has the values as all numeric I > tried formatting the column as text but SAS seems to ignore it. Is there a > way to force SAS to see the column as text? I even tried inserting a row > after the heading with X's in that particular column but that didnt work > either. I have many spreadsheets and dont want to have to edit each of > them. > > Thanks > > Jeff Kroll >