[R] importing data in excel

[Thomas Petzoldt]

Uwe Ligges wrote:
> Gerardo Prieto Blanco wrote:
> 
>> Hello, I need to care excel data to be used
>> in R,..., how do I make it?
>> Thank you and greetings, Gerardo Prieto
> 
> 
> Please read the R Data Import/Export manual!
> 
> Uwe Ligges

Hello Gerardo,

I completely agree with Uwe, and the following simple example may help:

1.) Create a rectangular area in Excel like this:

no	treat	val
1	a	1
2	a	5
3	b	3
4	b	3
5	b	2

2.) Mark and Copy these cells including the first row
=> the data are now in the so-called "Windows Clipboard"

3.) Switch to R and provide the following command (by typing it!, not by
copy and paste, because the clipboard already contains the data):

> dat <- read.table("clipboard", header=TRUE)

Now, the data are in dat and you can inspect them using:

> dat

or better

> str(dat)

Hints: depending on your configuration some additional options may be
necessary in read.table, e.g. sep="\t" (if your data contain empty
cells) or dec="," (on some non-English languages, e.g. German).
Furthermore there are many other ways to import data, see the manual.

Thomas P.