A feature in the SAS Universal Viewer enables you to save a data set as a .csv or .xml file. However, if the data set contains a numeric column that contains missing values, and you save the data set as a .csv file, the viewer will replace the missing values with zeros. This issue does not occur when you save the data set as a .xml file.

The problem occurs when there is no SAS format associated with the column. When there is no format associated with the column, the SAS formatting rules no longer apply.

To correct this issue, associate a format with the column before you create the data set or .xpt file. The resulting .csv file will, as expected, contain periods with missing numeric values.

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