GREATER THAN (≥), LESS THAN symbols (≤), and NOT EQUAL (≠) characters are mapped to ? characters when using the IMPORT procedure or LIBNAME statement to read Excel files.

This problem occurs because these character symbols are not found in the ANSI WLATIN1 character set.

To circumvent the problem use the UTF-8 version of the SAS® system. This typically can be invoked using the U8 version of the config file like this

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

The UTF-8 character set includes symbols of this type.

Operating System and Release Information

Product Family	Product	System	SAS Release
			Reported	Fixed*
SAS System	SAS/ACCESS Interface to PC Files	Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition	9.2 TS2M0
		Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition	9.2 TS2M0
		Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition	9.2 TS2M0
		Microsoft Windows XP Professional	9.2 TS2M0
		Windows Vista	9.2 TS2M0

* 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 importing GREATER THAN ≥, LESS THAN ≤, and NOT EQUAL ≠ symbols are mapped as ? in SAS. The reason for this is because the ANSI character set does not contain these symbols. To circumvent the problem use the UTF8 version of SAS when importing Excel files with these symbols.

Type:	Usage Note
Priority:

Date Modified:	2011-04-06 16:04:21
Date Created:	2011-03-30 17:13:56