The CALENDAR Procedure

Results: CALENDAR Procedure

What Affects the Quantity of PROC CALENDAR Output

The quantity of printed calendar output depends on

the range of dates in the activities data set
whether the FILL option is specified
the BY statement
the CALID statement.

PROC CALENDAR always prints one calendar for every month that contains any activities. If you specify the FILL option, then the procedure prints every month between the first and last activities, including months that contain no activities. Using the BY statement prints one set of output for each BY value. Using the CALID statement with OUTPUT=SEPARATE prints one set of output for each value of the CALID variable.

How Size Affects the Format of PROC CALENDAR Output

PROC CALENDAR always attempts to fit the calendar within a single page, as defined by the SAS system options PAGESIZE= and LINESIZE=. If the PAGESIZE= and LINESIZE= values do not allow sufficient room, then PROC CALENDAR might print the legend box on a separate page. If necessary, PROC CALENDAR truncates or omits values to make the output fit the page and prints messages to that effect in the SAS log.

What Affects the Lines That Show Activity Duration

In a schedule calendar, the duration of an activity is shown by a continuous line through each day of the activity. Values of variables for each activity are printed on the same line, separated by slashes (/). Each activity begins and ends with a plus sign (+). If an activity continues from one week to the next, then PROC CALENDAR displays arrows (< >) at the points of continuation.

The length of the activity lines depends on the amount of horizontal space available. You can increase the length by specifying

a larger line size with the LINESIZE= option in the OPTIONS statement
the WEEKDAYS option to suppress the printing of Saturday and Sunday, which provides more space for Monday through Friday.

Customizing the Calendar Appearance

PROC CALENDAR uses 17 of the 20 SAS formatting characters to construct the outline of the calendar and to print activity lines and to indicate holidays. You can use the FORMCHAR= option to customize the appearance of your PROC CALENDAR output by substituting your own characters for the default. See Formatting Characters Used by PROC CALENDAR and Formatting Characters in PROC CALENDAR Output.

If your printer supports an extended character set (one that includes graphics characters in addition to the regular alphanumeric characters), then you can greatly improve the appearance of your output by using the FORMCHAR= option to redefine formatting characters with hexadecimal characters. For information on which hexadecimal codes to use for which characters, consult the documentation for your hardware. For an example of assigning hexadecimal values, see FORMCHAR=.

Portability of ODS Output with PROC CALENDAR

Under certain circumstances, using PROC CALENDAR with the Output Delivery System produces files that are not portable. If the SAS system option FORMCHAR= in your SAS session uses nonstandard line-drawing characters, then the output might include strange characters instead of lines in operating environments in which the SAS Monospace font is not installed. To avoid this problem, specify the following OPTIONS statement before executing PROC CALENDAR:

options formchar="|----|+|---+=|-/\<>*";

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