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Sometimes, I just want to do a copy & paste from the output window in SAS. I can highlight text with a mouse-drag, but only SOMETIMES does that get copied to the clipboard. It doesn't matter if I use "CTRL-C" or right click -> copy, or edit -> copy

Any other SAS users experience this, and do you know a workaround/option/technique that can fix it?

Sometimes, I can fix it by clicking in another window, and coming back to the output window, but sometimes I just have to save the output window as a .lst and get the text from another editor.

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    $\begingroup$ Also, I know this might get flagged off-topic, or not statistical, but maybe not. I wouldn't mind seeing any SAS/R/SPPS/Stata question be fair game here. Statisticians should be the most experienced in these packages. $\endgroup$
    – Baltimark
    Commented Jul 22, 2010 at 11:59
  • $\begingroup$ imho offtopic. Even though it is an "Analysis" program, the question has definitely nothing to do with statistical analysis. Suggestion: contact the manufacturer of SAS, they can fix the problem. $\endgroup$
    – Peter Smit
    Commented Jul 22, 2010 at 12:05
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    $\begingroup$ See also meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1/… . Option 3 seems to be favored here, which means that questions that have not anything to do with statistics are closed/move. I think this is the same case. $\endgroup$
    – Peter Smit
    Commented Jul 22, 2010 at 12:12
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    $\begingroup$ I think questions about how to implement a statistical analysis in SAS/R/whatever are ok. But, purely interface questions are off-topic. $\endgroup$
    – user28
    Commented Jul 22, 2010 at 13:38
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    $\begingroup$ Vote to keep. Stat software questions have to go somewhere. Stackoverflow is not the right place. Either we need to answer them here, or start statssoftware.stackexchange.com $\endgroup$
    – Neil McGuigan
    Commented Jul 22, 2010 at 18:22

5 Answers 5

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I have been using SAS a long time and have never had an issue with highlighting results from the output window.

However since you are having an issue... there are alarge number of solutions!

Perhaps the most i like... and probably a good habit to get into is to output your results into datasets... or into excel spread sheets directly (using the ODS) you can also output directly into pdf, rtf with 2 lines of the simplest code you can imagine! if your code produces alot of output and you only have one table you want to copy you can specify the name of the table and it alone will be output using the ODS output.

usually you just need to wrap your Procedure (like Proc Means for example) with

ods PDF; Proc Means Data = blah N NMISS MEAN STD; class upto you; var you name it; run; ods PDF close;

of course there are many ways to get fancy with the way the output looks but that is a matter of trial and error and finding what you like or meets your needs.

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  • $\begingroup$ Yes, certainly when I need to I output what I want into excel, or csv, or whatever, but at times, I just want a quick C & P. It behave very oddly. . .not even giving me the option of "copy" from the "edit" drop-down. $\endgroup$
    – Baltimark
    Commented Jul 22, 2010 at 12:33
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I have had the exact same problem . . . in fact I'm having right now! It seems to matter whether or not I include the blue-colored labels from the output window. Try copying only the text in black (the table fillin's) and see if that does the trick. It worked for me just now, and then when I go back and try again to copy the whole of it, it allows me to copy the blue label text too! It seems to have woken SAS up to realize my desire to fill the clipboard. I hate SAS . . . but I refuse to let it defeat me!

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I have the problem sometimes. It seems as long as I do not highlight the whole output window but instead highlight all of it except the last line and leave a little extra space at the end of the line it always works.

If you are facing the problem try copying just the middle section and see if it works, if so then this can probably fix it.

Hopefully that made sense.

I just saw Dason's post and this sounds a lot like my solution.

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I haven't had the problem you're talking about for a while but I used to. It might be that when you're selecting the output that you want you release your mouse drag somewhere off of the output (ie you're selecting a large region and you start at the bottom right and drag to the upper left and let go of the mouse somewhere in the explorer area). I know when I did that it wouldn't go through with the copy. I needed to release the drag inside of the output window to allow a copy to go through. Like I said the version I'm using now doesn't have this problem so I can't actually test this but I believe that's how I fixed that problem before.

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Please look here: http://support.sas.com/kb/6/590.html when I mark an area top-down and copy it works. But when I mark an area bottom-up and copy it dosn't. The reason is that I normally set the curser after the last character of the last line I want to copy.

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