[R] Import from excel 2007

[Bert Gunter]

R's developers have made the right decision. Like it or  not, my company
colleagues and "customers" provide me most data in  Excel. I want to use R
to analyze/plot/etc the data, and sometimes to provide them R applications
to do the analyses themselves instead of the current Excel analyses (sic)
that they do. I am not paid to tell them to go look elsewhere for help
(especially when it can be difficult to convince them to work with me in the
first place -- but that's a much more difficult "cultural" issue).

Like it or not, Excel is the most widely used data analytical/graphics
package in the world. In the business world, we have to deal with such
realities. 


Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Statistics


-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On
Behalf Of Scionforbai
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 11:37 AM
To: marc_schwartz at comcast.net; r-help at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] Import from excel 2007

I just wonder: why should R and its community try to support such an
awful program, with its protected formats and unmantained
features/bugs?
I mean, from both philosophical and technical point of view: R is free
software and should rather try to be 'viral' than to compete. It
already has the strength, in my humble opinion.

You want to use excel: go and use, you payed for it, so you have a
commercial support elsewhere. You are not able to communicate with
other applications? That's the fault of excel, not of R, which is free
software and uses well documented formats.

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