Usage Note 40187: Unreadable content errors when exporting to Excel sheet names that are the same as an Excel column name
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When opening Excel files created by the SAS EXCEL engine, you can receive the following error:
Excel found unreadable content in 'YourWorkbookName' Do you want to recover the contents of this workbook? If you trust the source of this workbook click yes.
When you open the file, you can receive the error:
Removed Records: Named range from /xl/workbook.xml part (Workbook)
The problem occurs when the worksheet or SAS data set is named the same as a cell address. This causes issues with the Microsoft ACE engine when it creates the range address as it matches a cell column name. The following is a sample of this:
proc export data=a dbms=excel
outfile='c:\sastest\sample_SAS_workbook.xlsx' replace;
run;
proc export data=b dbms=excel
outfile='c:\sastest\sample_SAS_workbook.xlsx' replace;
run;
proc export data=c dbms=excel
outfile='c:\sastest\sample_SAS_workbook.xlsx' replace;
run;
To resolve the problem make sure the sheet name avoids the following range of characters from A to XFD. These are the names of columns in Excel.
Operating System and Release Information
| Product Family | Product | System | SAS Release | |
| Reported | Fixed* | |||
| SAS System | SAS/ACCESS Interface to PC Files | Microsoft Windows XP Professional | 9.2 TS2M0 | |
| Windows Vista | 9.2 TS2M0 | |||
| Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition | 9.2 TS2M0 | |||
| Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition | 9.2 TS2M0 | |||
| Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition | 9.2 TS2M0 | |||
Unreadable content errors can occur in spreadsheets when you name your spreadsheet the same name as a cell address. You should avoid names in the range from 'A' to 'XFD'.
| Type: | Usage Note |
| Priority: | |
| Topic: | Data Management ==> Data Sources ==> External Databases ==> MS Excel |
| Date Modified: | 2010-12-17 17:49:44 |
| Date Created: | 2010-07-02 09:31:13 |