With the UNIFORM option, an output table stays at one width, even if it breaks across many pages. The width of a column is determined by its longest entry, and the column uses that width for the entire table.

However, when a procedure has a BY statement, each BY group is a separate table, and the UNIFORM option does not apply.

If you want to make multiple tables uniform, use the table template or procedure code to set a fixed width on the cells of the column of interest. That is, assign a CELLWIDTH= to each one and specify a unit, not a percentage (e.g., style={cellwidth=0.5in}).

You may have noticed some cases when you did not need to use the UNIFORM option, even though a table extended past one page. This is because the ODS PRINTER code caches some extra observations beyond the actual length of the page (it uses very conservative assumptions when choosing the buffer size to use). Thus, a table that is only slightly longer than a page appears uniform regardless of the option setting.

The following code illustrates where the UNIFORM option makes a difference:

  data;
    a = "this is very long and so it will be quite wide";
    do x = 1 to 100;
       output;
       end;
    a = "short";
    do x = 1 to 100;
        output;
        end;
  run;

  ods pdf file="test.pdf";
  proc print; run;
  ods pdf uniform;
  proc print; run;
  ods pdf close;

See also SAS Note 9548.

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