Beginning in SAS 9.2, EFI, the EXPORT WIZARD, and PROC EXPORT allow you to write out variable labels instead of variable names when creating a comma, tab or delimited external file. However, the labels are limited to 32 characters. The limit will be increased in a future release of SAS.

A circumvention at this time if your labels are greater than 32 characters and you are creating a comma delimited file would be to use ODS CSV statement with PROC PRINT.

Here is an example of using the ODS CSV statement to create a comma delimited file with labels instead of variable names:

   ods csv file='c:\testlabels.csv';
     proc print data=abc label noobs;
     run;
   ods csv close;
 

Operating System and Release Information