Hi jpw, welcome to SAS.
It is possible to launch SAS jobs from Excel, the question is why you want to do it. Not questioning whether it needs to be done, but your aim will determine the best method. SAS does have an Excel add-in which allows you to run SAS functions etc from within Excel, however, this is an extra component you'd need to pay for, so you may not have it. I've seen it demo'd and it looks good, but I've never used it myself, so can't help you with that.
An alternative, if you want to launch a specific SAS job is to use VBA code to launch and run the SAS pogram. Again, I've never done this myself, but I regularly use DOS command scripts to submit SAS jobs, so I know that the idea is sound.
I believe that there may be a SAS component that can be added to your VBA as well, possibly allowing you to run the SAS code from Excel... I'm not sure about that though...
I hope that this helps, or at least gives you some avenues to pursue.
Chris
Business Analyst, Code Monkey, Data Wrangler.
SAS Guru.