Creating an Archivable PDF File

You can use the ODS PDF destination, or the ODS LISTING destination with the DEVICE=PDFA graphics option, to write your graph output to an archivable PDF file. By default, the ODS PDF destination writes your output to a PDF Version 1.4 file. To write your graphs to a PDF file that can be archived, add the PRINTER=PDFA option to your ODS statement. The PDFA Universal Printer shortcut device creates a PDF file that is compliant with PDF/A-1b standards and can be archived. See Using Graphics Devices for information about the PDFA Universal Printer shortcut device.

See Example: Writing Multiple Graphs to a One-Page, PDF/A-1b-Compliant File for an example of how to create an archivable PDF file using the ODS PDF destination.

You can also use the ODS LISTING destination with the DEVICE=PDFA graphics option to create an archivable PDF file. The following example writes a simple bar chart of electrical power revenue and generation sources to an archivable PDF file named useprev.pdf.

/* Create the output file reference */
filename pdfout "useprev.pdf";

/* Specify the PDFA device and the output filename */
goptions reset=all device=pdfa border gsfname=pdfout;

/* Close the ODS HTML destination */
ods html close;

/* Open the LISTING destination and specify the style */
ods listing style=statistical;

/* Generate the graph */
title  "US Electric Power - Revenue and Generation Sources";

proc gchart data=sashelp.electric (where=(year >= 2000)) ;
   vbar year / discrete sumvar=Revenue subgroup=Customer;
run;
quit;

/* Close ODS LISTING and open ODS HTML */
ods listing close;
ods html;