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Return to ODS RTF

Base SAS

ODS RTF, Release 8.1

ODS RTF is available to our customers beginning in Release 8.1, but it was not ready to be shipped along with the production release. If you are running Release 8.1 of SAS, and ODS RTF is not supported, then have your site representative contact SAS Technical Support to request the most recent 8.1 maintenance release. If you are running Release 8.2 or later, ODS RTF ships automatically with the software. However, the following examples demonstrate Release 8.1 output.

The sample SAS program odsrtf.sas produces the following RTF files:

• ods1.rtf - default RTF output
• ods2.rtf - minimalist RTF output, with very little in the way of fonts/shading and so on.
• ods3.rtf - customized RTF output.

The sample SAS program odsrtf2.sas produces one Rich Text file. It demonstrates

• a simple PROC PRINT that is too long for the page. Unlike the ODS HTML destination, ODS RTF (and ODS PRINTER) takes special care to repeat the column headings and all that at physical page boundaries. This is a "real" Word table - if you change the font size, for example, it will re-paginate correctly.
• a simple PROC PRINT that is too wide for the page. ODS RTF (and ODS PRINTER) tries to produce pleasing panels for output that is "too wide," although it is much harder to come up with a scheme for this that pleases everyone. HTML browsers typically do a very poor job of printing wide tables.
• customized DATA step output in a custom template.

The sample SAS program odsrtf3 was a crowd pleaser at the Pharmasug conference where it debuted. The Rich Text output file has no grid lines, one line between table header and body, one line between table body and footer, and no shading.

Enjoy!
and please send us your comments to ods@sas.com.