[R] Importing Excel file that has merged cells

[stefan lhachimi]

Dear all,

I have a problem with importing an excel file into R. I can open the
file easily (either saving it as a CSV or using RODBC). But the
original file is using merged cell in its first column, which gives
the name of the observation. (I am dealing with repeated measurements
for the same observation)
So when I open the dataframe in R it looks like this

Col1    Col2 Col3
name1 val1 val2
         val3 val4
....
name2  val5  val6
           val7  val8

Everything is fine, except that the name of the observation is on the
first line and the following are empty. Until a new observation
starts, where a new name appears in the respective row and the
following rows are empty and so on.

The number of rows is fixed for each observation. How can I fill the
column with the proper name (eg take the first string in this column
until you hit a row with a new string, then take this string and go on
until the next string).

Or read the excel file in such a way, that when cells are merged that
when importing it to R all cells created from this merged cell should
have the same content.

Unfortunately, I cannot change the lay-out of the original excel file
as it comes from an commercial data-base and I will have to use it
quite often.

I have the gut feeling that there might be an easy solution out there
as it does not seem to be an uncommon problem.

So if you have  hint or a solution I greatly appreciated it.
Thanks and a nice weekend,
Stefan