When you open Microsoft Excel files that have been created from a SAS Marketing Automation Export node or Communication node, you might receive the following message:

Excel found unreadable content in 'yourfile.xls'.  Do you want to recover 
the contents of this workbook. If you trust the source of this workbook click Yes. 

This problem occurs with Microsoft Excel 2007 running on a 64-bit platform and Microsoft Excel 2010 running on 32-bit and 64-bit platforms. If you open the same file in Microsoft Excel 2003, it opens correctly. The heading that the SAS^® System generates in the XLS file is causing the problem.

To work around this issue, open the Excel file in Excel 2003 and save the file again. You can also choose a different export type such as a comma delimited or a positional file.

Click the Hot Fix tab in this note to access the hot fix for this issue.

Notes

• For SAS Marketing Automation 5.3 and 5.4, in addition to applying the SAS Marketing Automation hot fix for your release, you will need to install three additional Foundation SAS^® hot fixes. These hot fixes are B25143, B25230, and C70009. Contact SAS Technical Support to obtain these hot fixes. You must also ensure that you have SAS^® 9.2_M3 installed.
• For SAS Marketing Automation 5.41, you do not need to install these Foundation SAS hot fixes, in addition to installing the SAS Marketing Automation 5.41 hot fix.

  There is an issue with these Foundation SAS hot fixes in which a BAK file is created when a previous version of the XSLX file exists. SAS Note 37485 "Updating Microsoft Excel workbooks or adding multiple worksheets creates .bak files replacing Excel worksheets" discusses this issue. There is no fix or workaround for this problem.

  After you apply the hot fix, follow these steps:

  1. Add the following line to the appropriate SAS programs:
     %let EXCELEXPORT=XLSX;

     For SAS Marketing Automation 5.3, add the preceding line to the appserver_autoexec_usermods.sas file that is located in the SAS\configuration-directory\Lev1\SASApp\ directory.

     For SAS Marketing Automation 5.4 and 5.41, add the preceding line to the MarketingAutomation_autoexec_usermods.sas file that is located in the SAS\configuration-directory\Lev1\Applications\SASCustomerIntelligence5.4\ directory.

  2. Restart your Object Spawner.

  When you make this change, you execute a campaign that includes a communication node that is using an export type of Microsoft Excel. Then the resulting export file will have a .xlsx extension instead of a .xls extension. The XLSX export file can then be opened successfully with Microsoft Excel 2007 running on a 64-bit platform and Microsoft Excel 2010 running on 32-bit and 64-bit platforms.

Operating System and Release Information

A fix for this issue for SAS Marketing Automation 5.3_M3 is available at:

A fix for this issue for SAS Marketing Automation 5.4_M1 is available at:

A fix for this issue for SAS Marketing Automation 5.41 is available at: