1. Becoming A Master Manipulator
Using Macro Functions To Manipulate SAS® Enterprise Guide Date Prompts

2. Becoming A Master Manipulator Edward Lan Los Angeles County Department of Public Health
Abstract
Methods
Results
In surveillance and epidemiologic functions of public health departments, SAS codes are created to produce recurring reports. Typically, these reports will assess the status of selected reportable diseases across time periods to monitor trends, such as case counts for current month, current year, past years, yearly averages. Instead of having a separate SAS Enterprise Guide (EG) date prompt for each date value, macro functions can manipulate dates to reduce the number of prompts necessary. This paper explores using macro functions and SAS EG 7.1 date prompts to automate manipulation of date values in lieu of multiple date prompts for reports.
Step 1 Create date prompts:
The SAS programmer needs to assess how many sets of dates are needed to create the report and what is the minimum number of date prompts needed. For example, instead of creating 8 different prompts, we can use 4.
Step 2 Create macros for dates captured from date prompt
Use “call symputx” statements to apply functions to the macro variables
Step 3 Apply formats to the dates to customize appearance in reports
Use %sysfunc to apply formats to the variables
Step 4 Create reports using these new dates
Formatted new dates resulting from macros will be created
From 4 prompt created macro variables, we can create 10 total date variables to be used for reporting
Conclusions
From a few initial sets of dates, we can create a series of related dates to create a comprehensive report monitoring trends. The end user will only need to input the initial sets of dates for the prompt and the SAS code will calculate the rest!
Objectives
Create date prompts
Utilize macro functions to manipulate the dates
Incorporate new dates into reports
End s

3. Becoming A Master Manipulator Edward Lan Los Angeles County Department of Public Health
Create date prompts
In the example report, we can see the following dates are needed:
Current month
Current month one year ago
YTD for this year
YTD for last year
Last year
2 years prior
3 years prior
5 year average
Example report featuring multiple sets of dates `
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4. Becoming A Master Manipulator Edward Lan Los Angeles County Department of Public HealthX
Create date prompts
Question: Is this too many prompts?
Select your answer:
A. Yes!
B. Too many!
Click here to continue `
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5. Becoming A Master Manipulator Edward Lan Los Angeles County Department of Public Health
Create date prompts
Instead of 8 prompts, we can use 4!
Start Date
End Date
Year Start (Average)
Year End (Average) 
Click here to continue `
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6. Click here to start manipulating!
Becoming A Master Manipulator Edward Lan Los Angeles County Department of Public Health
Manipulate variables
&date_start
&date_end
&average_start
&average_end
Click here to start manipulating!
Click here to continue `
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7. Click here to continue manipulating!
Becoming A Master Manipulator Edward Lan Los Angeles County Department of Public Health
Manipulate variables
Click here to continue manipulating!
Click here to continue `
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8. Becoming A Master Manipulator Edward Lan Los Angeles County Department of Public Health
Initial variables
Resulting variables `
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9. Becoming A Master Manipulator Edward Lan Los Angeles County Department of Public Health
Use them in reports!
Click here to use!
01MAR MAR2018 or 01MAR MAR2017
01JAN MAR2018 or 01JAN MAR2017
01JAN MAR2018 ` `
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10. Contact Information
Edward Lan
County of Los Angeles Dept. of Public Health
Tuberculosis Control Program ` S
Title
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