📥 PROC IMPORT in SAS: A Complete Guide to Importing External Data Files

One of the most common tasks in data analysis is importing external files into your SAS environment. Fortunately, SAS provides a powerful and flexible procedure called PROC IMPORT that allows you to bring in data from Excel, CSV, and text files with ease.

In this blog post, we'll explore everything you need to know about PROC IMPORT in SAS, including syntax, file types, options, practical examples, and visual aids to make your learning easier.

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🔍 What is PROC IMPORT?

PROC IMPORT is a SAS procedure that allows you to read data from various file types—most commonly:

• Microsoft Excel files (.xls, .xlsx)
• Comma-separated values files (.csv)
• Tab-delimited or plain text files (.txt)

The IMPORT procedure will, by default, get variable names from the first line in your data file. If you do not want this, then add the GETNAMES=NO statement after the PROC IMPORT statement. PROC IMPORT will assign the variables the names VAR1, VAR2, VAR3, and so on. Also if your data file is type DLM, PROC IMPORT assumes that the delimiter is a space. If you have a different delimiter, then specify it in the DELIMITER= statement. The following shows both these statements: 

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