read.xls {xlsReadWrite} | R Documentation |
Reads an Excelsheet and returns a data.frame or a matrix. Currently supported is the .xls (BIFF8) file format.
read.xls( file, colNames = TRUE, sheet = 1, type = "data.frame", from = 1, rowNames = NA, colClasses = NA, checkNames = TRUE, dateTimeAs = "numeric", stringsAsFactors = default.stringsAsFactors() )
file |
the name of a file. If it does not contain an absolute path, the file name is relative to the current working directory. |
colNames |
a character vector or a logical. TRUE takes a title row
from the spreadsheet. The default is "V" followed by the column number. |
sheet |
to read from. A case sensitive character string or a number. |
type |
the type of the returned value. Either data.frame or -
for matrices - double , integer , logical or character . |
from |
the starting row to read from. |
rowNames |
a character vector with the actual row names or a logical.
TRUE uses the first Excel column for the rownames, with FALSE
no rownames will be taken from Excel.
With NA the first column will be considered to contain row names
under the following three conditions: (1) colNames is TRUE or
contains a character vector, (2) the first column name thereof is an empty
string and (3) the first data cell contains a string which is not "1". |
colClasses |
the class of the data.frame columns. Possible entries are:
double , numeric , integer , logical , character ,
factor , NA , isodate , isotime and isodatetime .
A scalar entry will be recycled if necessary.
isodate retrieves a "YYYY-MM-DD", isotime a "hh:mm:ss" and
isodatetime a "YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss" character string.
With NA a suitable column type will be determined based on the
first non-empty entry of the 16 rows following from (starting row). |
checkNames |
with TRUE the colNames are guaranteed to be
syntactically valid variable names (by make.names ). |
dateTimeAs |
controls how to determine a column class for columns which are
formatted as date, time or datetime. Possible entries are: numeric
or isodatetime . Will be overruled by explicit colClasses arguments. |
stringsAsFactors |
set to FALSE to retrieve plain characters. The
default follows the global option default.stringsAsFactors() . |
The arguments colNames
and/or colClasses
can optionally include
an entry for the rownames column (which will be discarded).
A data.frame or a matrix of the specified type.
By purchasing xlsReadWritePro you help support our development and maintenance effort. We are grateful that quite some people and companies did, and both, the free and pro version shall benefit (e.g. crossplatform, which is not done on a lazy afternoon...).
Features of xlsReadWritePro: + append data to existing files, + work with in-memory objects (e.g. to compose Excel reports), + work with data area subsets, + use (named) ranges and pick individual cells, + work with sheets (copy, rename, delete), + read/write formula values, + insert images, + oleDateTime classes and more datetime helper functions, + formal support.
The trial (http://www.swissr.org) is free and the two versions can easily be switched and coexist just fine. So, why not check out xlsReadWritePro and see for yourself?
!! NOTE: xlsReadWritePro works well up to R 2.9.x but not yet on R 2.10 version. The reason is, that we are currently reorganizing internal things (git/redmine/web/distr/make). We started with the free version and the pro version will follow.
write.xls
,
read.table
, matrix
, data.frame
## Not run: rdata <- read.xls( rfile, colNames = myc( "one", "two", "three" ), from = 3, rowNames = FALSE, type = "double" ) ## there are many more examples under 'RUnitTests/test<xy>.R' ## End(Not run)