How do I remove all SAS formats from a sas7bdat table?

Question

I have a sas7bdat table that contains format information but I do not have the formats, so lots of the data appears as * and doesn't make much sense. I know the informat data that lies beneath is there — how can I remove all formats from the table?

Solution

The following code will strip all formatting from the table FORMATTED_TABLE and create a new table named UNFORMATTED_TABLE

data UNFORMATTED_TABLE;
  set FORMATTED_TABLE;
  format _all_;
run;