Skinning the Cat This Way and that: Using ODS to Create Microsoft Word Documents That Work for You
From sasCommunity
Elizabeth Axelrod, Abt Associates Inc., Cambridge, MA
David Shamlin, SAS Institute, Cary, NC
ABSTRACT
By supporting formats like Rich Text Format (RTF) and HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the SAS Output Delivery System (ODS) makes turning SAS output into Word documents easy. Tabular output from SAS procedures can be sent directly to a file that Word can read. However, the resulting Word document might fall short of your expected results.
For example, we needed to create a Word document that would serve as a user guide (or codebook), describing over 400 variables in a survey study. The body of the document needed to include detailed information for each variable. The Table of Contents needed to list the page numbers for the sections including the detailed information for each variable.
As a result, we experienced several formatting challenges. Long values in section titles did not wrap correctly, and there was too much white space between sections, to name a few.
In the course of creating a solution, we discovered a number of useful ODS tricks when creating a Word document using SAS output. We researched ways to automate the creation of the document and to minimize the amount of manual formatting in Word.
