SAS has an Import Wizard which makes it easy to read Excel (*.xls) files. Just click File, Import Data, Standard, Excel, then choose the file to input. It will ask you to choose the SAS destination. Just let Library remain at WORK (temporary) and for Member just type in any name starting with a letter. You will be told that the wizard will, if you wish, create an *.sas file with PROC IMPORT statements in it that you can then use to read the *.xls file later without having to use the wizard again. You just have to point at a directory and give it a *.sas name. I tried this with an Excel file a client emailed me, and it worked flawlessly. Variable names are captured from the *.xls file and missing data are properly handled.
After reading an Excel file into SAS, you may want to use PROC CONTENTS to obtain a summary of what has been read from the Excel file.
Of course, one can convert the *.xls file into another format, such as comma delimited, *.csv. Here is a bit of SAS help for dealing with such files.
DELIMITER|DLM= delimiters
Specifies a delimiter for list input. Delimiters can be expressed as a list of delimiting characters or as a character variable.
'list-of-delimiting-characters'
Specifies one or more (up to 200) characters to be read as delimiters. The list of characters must be enclosed in quotes.
character-variable
Specifies a character variable whose value is to be used as the delimiter.
Default: blank space
DSD
Changes how SAS treats delimiters when list input is used and sets the default delimiter to a comma. When you specify DSD, SAS treats two consecutive delimiters as a missing value.
MISSOVER
Prevents a SAS program from going to a new input line if, when using list input, it does not find values in the current line for all the INPUT statement variables. When an INPUT statement reaches the end of the current record, variables without any values assigned are set to missing.
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This page most recently revised on 27. March 2003.
