Migrating projects from SAS Enterprise Guide 2.x or 3.x to SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1 might cause errors. In some cases the reserved libref, EGTASK, is in some way involved. For EGTASK related problems, please refer to #010788 .

In some cases, queries with computed columns are involved and the generated code may even look corrupted.

Newly created projects in SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1 might also fail when attempting to run the entire Process Flow or, after saving and reopening the project, rerunning it may cause errors, although running each task or code runs fine.

For example, attempting to open a task such as a Query, Append, or Summary Table task may fail with the following message:

Or, running the entire project or process flow might generate an error similar to the following, and the error may occur one or many times:

Or, running a particular task might cause an error similar to:

One reason the problem will occur is if there are three or more queries that use a single table as input. There is no work around for this problem other than the upcoming hot fix for SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1.

Also, the following steps have been outlined specifically for attempting to circumvent the problem of getting the error 'Object reference not set to an instance of an object' for the Summary Table task.

1. Make a copy of the SAS Enterprise Guide 3.x project.
2. Open the new copy of the project using SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1.
3. If your task/s uses EGTASK as the default output library, then make sure EGTASK is still defined and assigned, which can be done using Tools ► Options ► SAS Enterprise Guide Explorer. Also make sure EGTASK is the default output library, which can be done using Tools ► Options ► Tasks ► Output Library, and using the Up key to move EGTASK to the top of the list.
4. Choose Project Designer, or the specific Process Flow that contains one of the Summary Table tasks for which you are getting one of the errors listed above.
5. Right-click on the summary table task and choose 'open last submitted code'.
6. Scroll down so you can see the proc tabulate code.
7. Select the data in the process flow that is going into the Summary Table task.
8. Then choose Describe ► Summary Table and build a new Summary Table task the same way you created the original and make sure if you specified an output table to define it with the same name.
9. Right-click on the 'old' Summary Table task and choose delete.
10. Do the same process for other Summary Table tasks for which you are not able to open.
11. Now you should be able to rerun the entire process flow.

In some cases, you will be able to run a query or append task that fails when the entire process flow is executed. In this case, after running the broken query or append task, you will then be able to run the entire process flow. However, saving and closing the project and then reopening to rerun the process flow will likely generate the same errors as listed above.

Select the Hot Fix tab in this note to access the hot fix for this issue.

Operating System and Release Information

A fix for this issue for Enterprise Guide 4.1 is available at: