After you have data in your project, you generally want to work with it in some way. In SAS Enterprise Guide, you use tasks to do everything from manipulating data, to running specific analytical procedures, to creating reports. Tasks are based on SAS programming procedures, and as you make selections in a task window, SAS Enterprise Guide writes a program to send to SAS. Each task has its own window. For example, if you want to create a bar chart, you select the data that you want to use, and then select the Bar Chart task. Some tasks have wizard versions that simplify the task even more for you.

The What is window opens on the right side of the workspace, but you can undock this window from the workspace by dragging the window title bar out of the workspace and position it wherever you want it. After you have opened a task window, you can view help for the entire task by pressing F1 to open the help window for that task. In addition, you can view a short description of each option that you can select in a task by moving your mouse pointer over the option and reading the description in the help pane at the bottom of the task window. Next you learn how you find the tasks that you need and you learn about some options that you can set for your tasks.