When you open a SAS data set, a list of tables appears in the Name column:

The tables that appear show the number of observations and the number of variables that comprise the table. To view a list of the variables in a table, click the table name. The variables and their properties appear in the right pane of the window, as shown in the following display:

A variable can be associated with a SAS format or informat. In the PRDSALE table shown above, the variable ACTUAL is written with the DOLLAR12.2 format.

SAS applies a format to the data by default. If you want to change the table default, select ToolsOptions from the menu. Then click the Formats tab. The check box on this tab works as a toggle. Check the box to change the default.

If your data set is very large, you can break the data set into pages and view one page of data at a time. If you select ToolsOptions from the menu, and then click the Performance tab, you can set how the data set breaks. The following display shows items that you can set in the Performance tab:

You can sort a data set by any column, but not by row. To sort a data set, click the heading of the column that you want to sort. If you sort the data in ascending order, an up arrow appears in the heading. If you click the heading again, the data is sorted in decreasing order, and a down arrow appears in the heading. Sorting columns applies only to the page of observations that you are viewing, not to the entire data set.

Select WHERE from the View menu (there is no View menu), or press Ctrl-W.

To resize columns, grab and drag the separator between the headings. Note that row height is determined by the font size.

Press Ctrl-C to copy an entire table, column, row, or block of data to the clipboard. Open NOTEPAD and press Ctrl-V to paste the data into NOTEPAD.

You can find text in a SAS file by using expressions to filter rows and columns.