Create and run SAS code in SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office

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When SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office was first created over a decade ago, SAS programmers were told to check their skills at the door. This new product was for non-programmers only. SAS programmers were invited to contribute to the experience by packaging their code in SAS stored processes, which end users would then run using point-and-click menus. But there was no way to write and run your SAS programs directly in Microsoft Excel or Word or PowerPoint.

This was a comfort to many SAS administrators, who wanted to provide SAS analytics to their end users but didn’t want them to have to learn to program. Or perhaps to even allow them to program. But, times have changed. Citizen data scientists have been practicing their coding skills, and now they want to mix it up in Microsoft Office. In response to this demand, SAS R&D has added the SAS programming environment — the parts that make sense, anyway — into SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office. You can write programs, run them, and drop the results into any part of your Microsoft Office document.

Here’s a short screencast of how it works in Microsoft Excel:

If you want to learn more and see a narrated demo from the principal developer, watch this interview with Tim Beese from SAS R&D. Tim shows the coding feature along with several other cool enhancements to SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office. As Tim explains, SAS administrators still have the final say when it comes to allowing Excel users to let loose with SAS code — they can enable the feature by role, and so grant this as a privilege at their discretion.

The first few minutes of this video shows some impressive integration with SAS Visual Analytics and Microsoft Excel. The SAS programming demo begins around the 5-minute mark.

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