When you read an external file that contains an emoji, SAS cannot read the emoji as part of the character variable and then returns one of the following messages in the SAS log. In the first message, x is a number referring to the record in the external file:

You can also encounter this WARNING/ERROR when reading Non-ANSI Latin-1 Characters as part of the character variable.  

There is a workaround that you can use in a maintenance release prior to SAS^® 9.4M6 (TS1M6). You can use a tool outside of SAS to remove the emoji from the external file before you use the IMPORT procedure or a DATA step with the INFILE and INPUT statements to read the external file. 

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

After you apply the hot fix for either SAS 9.4M6 or SAS^® 9.4M7 (TS1M7), SAS can read in the emoji and store it in a SAS data set with the correct UTF-8 encoding.

Operating System and Release Information

A fix for this issue for Base SAS 9.4_M7 is available at:

A fix for this issue for Base SAS 9.4_M6 is available at: