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Home » Enterprise Guide

SAS Enterprise Guide: Quick Tip for Selecting Text in Columns

Submitted by Tricia Aanderud on 2012-01-20 – 2:20 AM

Earlier in the week I discussed how I used Google Analytics to help me discover topics of the most interest. SAS Enterprise Guide was a popular topic, so here’s a quick tip that I like to use when working with text in columns.

Moving Text around in SAS Enterprise Guide

When it comes to data entry, I can assure you that I put the “Z” in lazzzzzzzzzzzzzy. Blech, I hate it more than pie charts. It’s the first thing I’ll have my home robot do when they finally become as normal as a refrigerator. So here’s a tip to save you some keystrokes. When you copy text in SAS EG, you generally have to copy entire rows, but sometimes you just need a list of variable names or the variable values.

When you need to copy a column of data, do the following:

Hold the ALT key while clicking and dragging to select the column. The column turns blue so you know it works.
Press Ctrl+C to copy the column.
Click where you want to place the text and press Ctrl+V to paste it. Then you can make any edits you desire.

SAS Enterprise Guide - Moving Text Around

Applying this Trick In Other Areas

You can use this tip when you have Listing (plain, non HTML, SAS Report, etc) output and also in BASE SAS. For instance, instead of retyping a list of order numbers you need to review – why not output to Listing format and copy the list? I realize it would have to be a longer list than what I am showing here but I wanted to give you the idea.

Select Tools > Options. Then go to the Results > Results General tab.
Select the Text output to get the Results Listing.
After you run your code – go to the Results Listing tab and apply the trick I just showed you.
You can paste this text into your WHERE statement.

SAS Enterprise Guide Select Listing Columns

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Tricia Aanderud

Director of Data Visualization at Zencos Consulting

Tricia Aanderud is a SAS Business Intelligence and Visual Analytics consultant based in Raleigh, NC who works for Zencos Consulting. She has written several books about SAS, presented papers at many SAS conferences, and has been using SAS since 2001. Contact her for assistance with your next project.