SAS University Edition: Help Center

How do I create a folder shortcut to my existing SAS files?

When you use a vApp, shared folders are used by your virtualization software to access files on your local machine. Your default shared folder is Folders > My Folders. In your operating environment, this shared folder is called myfolders. If you have any existing SAS programs or data sets that you want to use in the SAS University Edition, you can copy these SAS files to the myfolders directory on your local computer.

If you want to access your existing SAS files in JupyterLab, make sure that the file and folder names do not include embedded spaces or special characters. JupyterLab does not support embedded spaces or special characters in file and folder names. For more information, see What is JupyterLab in SAS University Edition?

If you have a lot of files, you might want to create folder shortcuts instead. To create these folder shortcuts, create additional shared folders. Unlike the myfolders shared folder, you can customize the names for these folder shortcuts.

An example path of the myfolders folder on Windows is C:\SASUniversityEdition\myfolders.

To ensure that this folder shortcut persists between sessions and when the SAS University Edition vApp is updated, use the shared folder functionality in your virtualization software to create these folder shortcuts. If you create a folder shortcut by using the New Folder Shortcut feature in SAS Studio, your folder shortcut is not saved when you sign out of SAS Studio.

In this screenshot, the folder shortcuts are folder1, folder2, and folder3.

To create these folder shortcuts, complete the same steps that you completed to create the myfolders shared folder. The primary difference is that you can customize the names for these folder shortcuts. You do not need to use the folder1, folder2, and folder3 naming conventions.

1. In VMware Workstation Player, select the SAS University Edition vApp, and then click Edit virtual machine settings.

2. On the Options tab, select Shared Folders.

3. In the Folder sharing area, select Always enabled.

4. To add a new shared folder, click Add. The Add Shared Folder Wizard appears.
   1. In the Name the Shared Folder step, click Browse. In the Browse for Folder window, select the folder (in this example, folder1) where you want to create the shortcut. Click OK.

      The name of the shared folder is case sensitive and should not include any spaces or special characters. If you use a network folder, do not include a backslash (\) in the name of the shared folder.

      Click Next.

   2. In the Specify Shared Folder Attributes step, click Finish.

5. In the Virtual Machines Settings dialog box, click OK.

You can add these shortcuts before you start SAS Studio or while SAS Studio is running. If you add these shortcuts while SAS Studio is running, click in the navigation pane to see the new folder shortcuts (for example, folder1).

To reference this folder shortcut in a SAS program, use /folders/myshortcuts/folder-name.