Starting in SAS 9.3, the ODS HTML destination is turned on by default when using the SAS windowing environment. This is part of several changes at start-up discussed in SAS Note 42874, "Default behavior for the SAS windowing environment on Microsoft Windows, UNIX, and Linux operating systems has changed beginning with SAS® 9.3."

As part of this change, the HTML file created by ODS has the NEWFILE=NONE option set by default. Therefore, all procedure and DATA step output is sent to a single HTML file. When clearing the Results window manually by clicking on a node in the Results window and selecting Delete, or by issuing the ODSRESULTS;CLEAR command, nodes are deleted from the Results window. However, the HTML file remains open and the output from subsequent procedure or DATA steps is appended to any previously created HTML output.

To circumvent the issue, do one of the following:

1. Prepend the following statements to your code in order to close the currently open HTML destination and reopen it based on the registry settings in Tools ► Options ► Preferences ► Results:

   ods html close; 
   ods preferences;
   

   Note that the ODS PREFERENCES statement is preproduction syntax in SAS 9.3.

2. Submit the following statement:

   ods html newfile=proc; 
   

   The NEWFILE=PROC option generates a new HTML file for output from each procedure. Additional valid values for the NEWFILE= option include BYGROUP, OUTPUT, and PAGE.

3. From the SAS menu bar, select Tools ► Options ► Preferences. Click the Results tab and do the following:

   Under HTML, clear the Create HTML option. Then use customized ODS HTML FILE= statements to generate your HTML output.

4. Beginning with the second maintenance release for SAS 9.3 (TS1M2), you can now clear out all of the HTML output that is currently displayed in the SAS Results Viewer window by selecting Edit ► Clear All from the SAS menu bar in either the Results Viewer window or the Results window.

Operating System and Release Information