Repeating values after page break in proc report

Question

I created a report of the following form:

ID   VAR1
      VAR2

111  1
      2
     
     3
      4

     5
      6

222  1
      2

I need to follow a requirement that if a page break appears inside the ID block, then the ID value must be displayed on the next page. The following form is not acceptable:

ID   VAR1
      VAR2

111  1
      2
     
     3
      4
-----PAGE BREAK----
     5
      6

222  1
      2

The page break must not occur between VAR1 and VAR2, either:

      VAR2

111  1
      2
     
     3
-------PAGE BREAK--------      
      4

     5
      6

222  1
      2

The report should look like this:

ID   VAR1
      VAR2

111  1
      2
     
     3
      4
-------PAGE BREAK-----
111  5
      6

222  1
      2

The question is - how to obtain the result? I don't want to present each ID on a separate page because unique ID blocks differ in length. So there is no simple solution like creating page break variable with different values for different IDs. I would like to avoid modifying any variables (except grouping/sorting variables) in the dataset I feed into proc report.

I would appreciate any input on this. Thanks.

Answer 1

You need to use the spanrows option, like is shown in this paper from PharmaSUG 2011 - Beyond the Basics: Advanced REPORT Procedure Tips and Tricks Updated for SAS® 9.2. You don't share your code, but it goes on the PROC REPORT line. Here's the example from the paper:

data spanrows_example;
 set sashelp.class
 sashelp.class
 sashelp.class;
run;

ods pdf file='c:\spanrows.pdf';
proc report nowd data= spanrows_example spanrows;
 col sex age name height weight;
 define sex / order;
run;
ods pdf close; 

You can't necessarily get what you want as far as var1/var2, though, without forcing a page break if you're close to a page (which is quite challenging to calculate accurately).