R: Use Excel as Viewer for a Data.Frame

XLView {DescTools} | R Documentation

## Use Excel as Viewer for a Data.Frame

### Description

`XLView` can be used to view and edit a data.frame directly in Excel, resp. to create a new data.frame in Excel.

### Usage

    XLView(x, col.names = TRUE, row.names = FALSE, na = "")

    XLKill()

### Arguments

`x` | is a data.frame to be transferred to Excel. If data is missing a new file will be created.
`row.names` | either a logical value indicating whether the row names of x are to be written along with x, or a character vector of row names to be written.
`col.names` | either a logical value indicating whether the column names of x are to be written along with x, or a character vector of column names to be written. See the section on 'CSV files' `write.table` for the meaning of `col.names = NA`.
`na` | the string to use for missing values in the data.

### Details

The data.frame will be exported in CSV format and then imported in Excel.
Take care: Changes to the data made in Excel will NOT automatically be updated in the original data.frame. The user will have to read the csv-file into R again. See examples how to get this done.
`XLKill` will kill a running XL instance (which might be invisible). Background is the fact, that the simple XL$quit() command would not terminate a running XL task, but only set it invisible (observe the TaskManager). This ghost version may sometimes confuse XLView and hinder to create a new instance. In such cases you have to do the garbage collection...

### Value

the name/path of the temporary file edited in Excel.

### Note

The function works only in Windows and requires RDCOMClient to be installed (see: Additional_repositories in DESCRIPTION of the package).

### Author(s)

Andri Signorell <andri@signorell.net>

### See Also

`GetNewXL`, `XLGetRange`, `XLGetWorkbook`

### Examples

    ## Not run: # Windows-specific example
    XLView(d.diamonds)

    # edit an existing data.frame in Excel, make changes and save there, return the filename
    fn <- XLView(d.diamonds)
    # read the changed file and store in new data.frame
    d.frm <- read.table(fn, header=TRUE, quote="", sep=";")

    # Create a new file, edit it in Excel...
    fn <- XLView()
    # ... and read it into a data.frame when in R again
    d.set <- read.table(fn, header=TRUE, quote="", sep=";")

    # Export a ftable object, quite elegant...
    XLView(format(ftable(Titanic), quote=FALSE), row.names = FALSE, col.names = FALSE)

    ## End(Not run)

[Package DescTools version 0.99.24 Index]