Dash characters are mistranslated to underscores when using the SHEET= option with the IMPORT and EXPORT procedure. In this example:

proc export data = sashelp.class
 dbms = excel
 file = "j:\mydata\testout.xls"
 replace;
 sheet = 'AE-MHX';
 run;

The sheet created in EXCEL is named AE_MHX instead of AE-MHX.

The IMPORT procedure works in a similar way. In this example the IMPORT procedure will attempt to import a sheet with a dash character.

proc import file = "j:\mydata\testout.xls"
 dbms = excel
 out = test
 replace;
 sheet = 'AE-MHX';
 run;

However the IMPORT procedure will actually look for AE_MHX as the sheetname.

To circumvent the problem, avoid dashes in your sheetname when creating the Excel file and rename the dash character to an underscore character when importing the file.

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