If your machine is set for a Latin-1 encoding (which handles English and other Latin-1 languages), when you import characters from other encodings (for languages such as Chinese, Greek, or Cyrillic) into Excel and other PC file formats, such characters might be displayed as question marks or other unprintable characters. This problem occurs because the characters are not properly transcoded by the Microsoft Joint Engine Technology (JET) engine.

The Microsoft JET engine can only read the language or encoding of its operating system. For example, if you are running an operating system with a Latin-1 encoding" , Microsoft installs a Jet engine that cannot handle languages in encodings other than Latin-1 such as Chinese, Polish extended characters, or Cyrillic.

To circumvent the problem, you should ask for tab-delimited text files that are created on these type of machines.

Tab-delimited text files avoid the encoding issues with the Jet engine. However you still need to do the following for languages in other encodings:

1. In SAS^®, verify that the software is set to the appropriate locale with the LOCALE= system option.
2. In the Windows Control Panel, select Start ► Settings ► Control Panel ► Regional and Language Options and verify the locale setting.
3. Make the Output window active and select Tools ► Options ► Fontsfrom the menu. Verify the language setting in the Script field. For example, for the Russian language, the Script field should be set to Cyrillic.

Note: If you are using Chinese or Japanese, you also need to install the double-byte character set (DBCS) version of SAS in orderfor that language as well to read these file.

This problem is solved in version 9.2 with the use the the Access Connectivity Engine (ACE). You can use UTF-8 encoding in version 9.2 as shown here:

"C:\Program Files\SAS92\SASFoundation\9.2\sas.exe" -CONFIG "C:\Program Files\SAS92\SASFoundation\9.2\nls\u8\SASV9.CFG"

Operating System and Release Information

Product Family	Product	System	SAS Release
			Reported	Fixed*
SAS System	SAS/ACCESS Interface to PC Files	Microsoft® Windows® for 64-Bit Itanium-based Systems	9.1 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter 64-bit Edition	9.1 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise 64-bit Edition	9.1 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows NT Workstation	9.1 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition	9.1 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition	9.1 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional	9.1 TS1M3
		Microsoft® Windows® for x64	9.1 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server	9.1 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows XP 64-bit Edition	9.1 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows 2000 Server	9.1 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server	9.1 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition	9.1 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows XP Professional	9.1 TS1M3
		Windows Vista	9.1 TS1M3

* For software releases that are not yet generally available, the Fixed Release is the software release in which the problem is planned to be fixed.

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When you import national characters from foreign languages into Excel, these characters are often replaced by question marks (?) or unprintable characters.

Type:	Usage Note
Priority:
Topic:	Data Management ==> Data Sources ==> External Databases ==> MS Excel

Date Modified:	2009-10-21 12:42:52
Date Created:	2008-02-19 10:38:54