How to convert SAS data files into something simple like CSV data

But Excel, without fail, converts these files into useless garbage.

Excel is useless garbage.

Solution

I would be a little surprised if any client wanting your data in an Excel format was unable to change the visible formatting on those three columns to "Number" with zero decimal places or to "text." But let's assume that a short how-to document is out of the question.

Your options are:

1. Toss a non numeric, not whitespace character into your serial numbers.
2. Write out an xls file or xlsx file with some default formatting.
3. Cheat and output those numbers as formulas ="268435459705526269","",="268435459705526269" (you can also do ="268435459705526269",,="268435459705526269" saving yourself 2 characters). This has the advantage of displaying correctly, and probably being generally useful, but subtly broken (as they are formulas).

Be careful with option 3, because some programs (including Excel & Open Office Calc), will no longer treat commas inside ="" fields as escaped. That means ="abc,xyz" will span two columns and break the import.

Using the format of "=""abc,xy""" solves this problem, but this method still limits you to 255 characters because of Excel's formula length limit.