How to Export Data from SAS to CSV File (With Examples)

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You can use proc export to quickly export data from SAS to a CSV file.

This procedure uses the following basic syntax:

/*export data to file called data.csv*/
proc export data=my_data
    outfile="/home/u13181/data.csv"
    dbms=csv
    replace;
run;

Here’s what each line does:

• data: Name of dataset to export
• outfile: Location to export CSV file
• dmbs: File format to use for export
• replace: Replace the file if it already exists

The following examples show how to use this function in practice.

Related: How to Export Data from SAS to Excel

Example 1: Export Dataset to CSV with Default Settings

Suppose we have the following dataset in SAS:

/*create dataset*/
data my_data;
    input A B C;
    datalines;
1 4 76
2 3 49
2 3 85
4 5 88
2 2 90
4 6 78
5 9 80
;
run;

/*view dataset*/
proc print data=my_data;

We can use the following code to export this dataset to a CSV file called data.csv:

/*export dataset*/
proc export data=my_data
    outfile="/home/u13181/data.csv"
    dbms=csv
    replace;
run;

I can then navigate to the location on my computer where I exported the file and view it:

The data in the CSV file matches the dataset from SAS.

Example 2: Export Dataset to CSV with Custom Settings

You can also use the delimiter and putnames arguments to change the delimiter that separates the values and remove the header row from the dataset.

For example, the following code shows how to export a SAS dataset to a CSV file using a semi-colon as the delimiter and no header row:

/*export dataset*/
proc export data=my_data
    outfile="/home/u13181/data.csv"
    dbms=csv
    replace;
    delimiter=";";
    putnames=NO;
run;

I can then navigate to the location on my computer where I exported the file and view it:

Notice that the header row has been removed and the values are separated by semi-colons instead of commas.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in SAS:

How to Normalize Data in SAS
How to Rename Variables in SAS
How to Remove Duplicates in SAS
How to Replace Missing Values with Zero in SAS