R: Read Excel files

read.xls {gdata} | R Documentation

## Read Excel files

### Description

Read a Microsoft Excel file into a data frame

### Usage

    read.xls(xls, sheet=1, verbose=FALSE, pattern, na.strings=c("NA","#DIV/0!"),
             ..., method=c("csv","tsv","tab"), perl="perl")
    xls2csv(xls, sheet=1, verbose=FALSE, blank.lines.skip=TRUE, ..., perl="perl")
    xls2tab(xls, sheet=1, verbose=FALSE, blank.lines.skip=TRUE, ..., perl="perl")
    xls2tsv(xls, sheet=1, verbose=FALSE, blank.lines.skip=TRUE, ..., perl="perl")
    xls2sep(xls, sheet=1, verbose=FALSE, blank.lines.skip=TRUE, ...,
            method=c("csv","tsv","tab"), perl="perl")

### Arguments

`xls` | path to the Microsoft Excel file. Supports "http://", "https://", and "ftp://" URLS.
`sheet` | name or number of the worksheet to read
`verbose` | logical flag indicating whether details should be printed as the file is processed.
`pattern` | if specified, them skip all lines before the first containing this string
`perl` | name of the perl executable to be called.
`method` | intermediate file format, "csv" for comma-separated and "tab" for tab-separated
`na.strings` | a character vector of strings which are to be interpreted as 'NA' values. See `read.table` for details.
`blank.lines.skip` | logical flag indicating whether blank lines in the orginal file should be ignored.
`...` | additional arguments to read.table. The defaults for read.csv() are used.

### Details

This function works translating the named Microsoft Excel file into a temporary .csv or .tab file, using the xls2csv or xls2tab Perl script installed as part of this (gdata) package.

Caution: In the conversion to csv, strings will be quoted. This can be problem if you are trying to use the `comment.char` option of `read.table` since the first character of all lines (including comment lines) will be "\"" after conversion.

If you have quotes in your data which confuse the process you may wish to use `read.xls(..., quote = '')`. This will cause the quotes to be regarded as data and you will have to then handle the quotes yourself after reading the file in.

Caution: If you call `"xls2csv"` directly, is your responsibility to close and delete the file after using it.

### Value

`"read.xls"` returns a data frame.

`"xls2sep"` returns a temporary file in the specified format. `"xls2csv"` and `"xls2tab"` are simply wrappers for `"xls2sep"` specifying method as "csv" or "tab", respectively.

### Note

Either a working version of Perl must be present in the executable search path, or the exact path of the perl executable must be provided via the `perl` argument. See the examples below for an illustration.

### Author(s)

Gregory R. Warnes greg@warnes.net, Jim Rogers james.a.rogers@pfizer.com, and Gabor Grothendiek ggrothendieck@gmail.com.

### References

http://www.analytics.washington.edu/statcomp/downloads/xls2csv

### See Also

`read.csv`

### Examples

       # iris.xls is included in the gregmisc package for use as an example
       xlsfile <- file.path(path.package('gdata'),'xls','iris.xls')
       xlsfile

       iris <- read.xls(xlsfile) # defaults to csv format
       iris <- read.xls(xlsfile,method="csv") # specify csv format
       iris <- read.xls(xlsfile,method="tab") # specify tab format

       head(iris)  # look at the top few rows

      ## Not run:
       ## Example specifying exact Perl path for default MS-Windows install of
       ## ActiveState perl
       iris <- read.xls(xlsfile, perl="C:/perl/bin/perl.exe")

    ## End(Not run)

       ## Not run:
       ## Example specifying exact Perl path for Unix systems
       iris <- read.xls(xlsfile, perl="/usr/bin/perl")

       ## finding perl
       ## (read.xls automatically calls findPerl so this is rarely needed)
       perl <- gdata:::findPerl("perl")
       iris <- read.xls(xlsfile, perl=perl)

    ## End(Not run)

       ## Not run:
       ## read xls file from net
       nba.url <- "http://mgtclass.mgt.unm.edu/Bose/Excel/Tutorial.05/Cases/NBA.xls"
       nba <- read.xls(nba.url)

    ## End(Not run)

       ## Not run:
       ## read xls file ignoring all lines prior to first containing State
       crime.url <- "http://www.jrsainfo.org/jabg/state_data2/Tribal_Data00.xls"
       crime <- read.xls(crime.url, pattern = "State")

       ## use of xls2csv - open con, print two lines, close con
       con <- xls2csv(crime.url)
       print(readLines(con, 2))
       file.remove(summary(con)$description)

    ## End(Not run)

       ## Examples demonstrating selection of specific 'sheets'
       ## from the example XLS file 'ExampleExcelFile.xls'
       exampleFile <- file.path(path.package('gdata'),'xls',
                                'ExampleExcelFile.xls')
       exampleFile2007 <- file.path(path.package('gdata'),'xls',
                                'ExampleExcelFile.xlsx')

       ## see the number and names of sheets:
       sheetCount(exampleFile)
       if( 'XLSX' %in% xlsFormats() )  ## if XLSX is supported..
         sheetCount(exampleFile2007)

       ## show names of shets in the file
       sheetNames(exampleFile)
       if( 'XLSX' %in% xlsFormats() )  ## if XLSX is supported..
       sheetNames(exampleFile2007)

       data <- read.xls(exampleFile)          ## default is first worksheet
       data <- read.xls(exampleFile, sheet=2) ## second worksheet by number
       data <- read.xls(exampleFile, sheet="Sheet Second",v=TRUE) ## and by name

       ## load the third worksheet, skipping the first two non-data lines...
       if( 'XLSX' %in% xlsFormats() )  ## if XLSX is supported..
         data <- read.xls(exampleFile2007, sheet="Sheet with initial text", skip=2)

       ## load a file containing data and column names using latin-1
       ## characters
       latinFile <- file.path(path.package('gdata'),'xls','latin-1.xls')
       latin1 <- read.xls(latinFile, fileEncoding="latin1")
       colnames(latin1)

[Package gdata version 2.18.0 Index]