Working Smarter, Not Harder with DDE: Did I Really Spend All That Time Just Formatting My Report? Bobby Kidd Vice President Senior Statistical Portfolio Analyst First Horizon National Corp

Hey, What ’ s With the Acronyms! DDE stands for Dynamic Data Exchange DDE in SAS gives you the ability to read from, write to, and issue program commands to many Microsoft Applications such as Excel and Word Since most reporting is done with Excel we will limit ourselves to that program

But I Can Already Read From and Write To Excel Proc Import and Proc Export both require the data to start at the top right corner, Cell A1 of the first sheet. DDE, however, can read from and write to any cell or group of cells in any sheet in the file. It can also create new rows, columns, and worksheets.

But, that ’ s not all! In addition to the freedom of defining where you want the data You can change the format and the font Copy and Paste from other cells, worksheets and even other files. Create new new formulas Add Worksheets, Columns and Rows In short, just about everything you can do in Excel, you can program into DDE

OK, But why would I want to? The less man(ual) handling of the data, the better Don ’ t have to worry about copying over data Don ’ t have to remember to format those 1 or 2 cells down in the corner of the sheet. How many times have you had to go back and fix typo ’ s and formatting errors Data provided from someone else's formatted reports Do you really enjoy copying, pasting and formatting the same report every day, week, month when you can make SAS do it all for you in seconds.

The Basics Very similar to working with flat files Starts with filename statement DDE triplet: program|filepath[filename]sheet!location Filename sample DDE ‘ excel|c:\foo\[bar.xls]yourdatahere!R4c5 ’ ; Read data with input statement Write data with put statement

Mild Read Data Be mindful of informats filename readme dde 'excel|C:\...\SAS Pres\[samples.xls]Read Me!R5C3:R14C6'; data DDERead; infile readme; informat Name $8. Sex $1. Purchase_Amount dollar8.2 State$2.; input Name$ Sex$ Purchase_Amount State$; run;

Mild

Write Data Just like writing to flat file filename writeme1 dde 'excel|C:\...\SAS Pres\[samples.xls]Write Me!R5C2:R8C3'; filename writeme2 dde 'excel|C:\...\SAS Pres\[samples.xls]Write Me!R12C2:R13C3'; data _null_; set state; file writeme1; put State Total; run; data _null_; set sex; file writeme2; put Sex Total; run;

Medium Increase Control Use notab to gain control over delimiters When reading use dlm= ’ 09 ’ x for the tab key Flat file default is space delimited so “ Abel C ” would be two fields filename readme dde 'excel|C:\...\SAS Pres\[samples.xls]Read Me!R5C3:R14C6' notab; data readdde; infile readme dlm = '09'x; informat Name $8. Sex $1. Purchase_Amount dollar8.2 State$2.; input Name Sex Purchase_Amount State; run;

Medium Without dlm= ’ 09 ’ x and notab With dlm= ’ 09 ’ x and notab

Medium Control Write delimiters Use notab to prevent SAS from changing spaces into tabs Use ’ 09 ’ x to place tab delimiters where you want them. filename MinP dde 'excel|C:\...\SAS Pres\[samples.xls]Write Me!R16C2:R16C3' notab; filename MaxP dde 'excel|C:\...\SAS Pres\[samples.xls]Write Me!R19C2:R19C3' notab; data _null_; set min; file MinP; Put Name '09'x Purchase_Amount; run; data _null_; set max; file MaxP; Put Name '09'x Purchase_Amount; run;

Medium Without notab, with ’ 09 ’ x: spaces become tabs With notab, without ’ 09 ’ x: everything is one field

Hot Beyond Data: Formatting, formulas, files It ’ s not a virus: Macrofun.exe Available from Microsoft Macro4 helpfile Contains most if not all Excel macro4 functions Filename cmds dde 'excel|system'; Allows SAS to issue system commands Open, save, and close files, etc.

Hot Macro Functions Example Format.font Function Name and syntax given in detail. Parameter descriptions and values are documented Only need to specify parameters as far as you need Use with Put statement: put '[format.font("script",,1)]';

Hot Excel must be opened first Manual Easy but tedious X command Issues DOS commands Noxwait, noxsync allow SAS to run concurrently with Excel Doesn ’ t like spaces Use “ cd ” to reach folders with spaces in names

Hot Start Excel Options noxwait noxsync; x 'cd c:\Program files\microsoft office'; x 'Office10\excel.exe'; Open file Use sleep function to ensure excel has loaded before issuing commands. Commands still issued with put statements filename cmds dde 'excel|system'; data _null_; file cmds; put '[file-open("C:\...\SAS Pres\sample.xls")]'; run;

Hot Implementation filename cmds dde 'excel|system'; data _null_; file cmds; put '[select("r5c2:r8c2")]'; put ‘ [select( “ r5c3:r8c3 ” )] ’ ; put '[format.font( “ times new roman",,1)]'; put ‘ [format.number( “ $#,###.00 ” )]; run;

Hot Save, close and Quit Save.as() to save file File-close() to close the wookbook Quit() to end excel Commands still issued with put statements data _null_; file cmds; put '[save.as("C:\...\Sas Pres\sample.xls")]'; put '[file-close()]'; put '[quit()]'; run;

As Hot As You Can Take Write formulas: put ‘[formula("=sum(R[-19]C:R[-14]C)/R38C20")]’; put ‘[formula("=sum(R12C20:R17C20)/R38C20")]’; Combine with ODS html output into.xls Use activate(filename) and workbook.activate(sheet) to choose between file sheet Use select(cellrange), copy(), paste() Combine with Macro Variables Automatically change rows, columns with month Define columns as function of month Macros only resolve inside double quotes put "[formula(""=sum(R[-19]C:R[-14]C)/R38C&col."")]";

Complete Automation Read, Write and Manipulate Excel all from within SAS With use of SAS ’ wakeup function can schedule reports to be ready when you show up to work Hit F8 and walk away

Questions