How to handle UTF-8 characters when reading a file in SAS?

Question

How to handle UTF-8 characters when reading a file in SAS?

Such as spanish characters like ó í é á among other special characters within UTF-8 so it doesn't display garbage strings like

é instead of é

Answer 1

From SAS Documentation:

To specify which encoding to use when reading the external file, specify the ENCODING= option:

libname myfiles  'SAS data-library';        
filename extfile 'external-file' encoding="utf-8";

data myfiles.unicode;                                                                                                                           
   infile extfile;                                                                                                     
   input Make $ Model $ Year;                                                                                                           
run;

Answer 2

The simple way to achieve this is Right click your file's metadata step -> Properties

File Parameters -> Advanced

Now type UTF-8 in the encoding options. Press OK and it should be enabled for that file.