[R] Importing an Excel spreadsheet

[andy]

Bryan K Woods wrote:
> If you open the spreadsheet in Excel you can then do "Save as..." and 
> select type CSV (comma-delimited text). Once you have the data in CSV 
> format, you can use the R function read.csv to import the data.
>
> Cheers,
> Bryan
>
> andy wrote:
>> Hello
>>
>> I am trying to import an *.xls spreadsheet into R. I am doing this as 
>> follows:
>>
>>  > read.table(file("A5_DL.xls"))
>>
>> But obtain the error:
>>
>> Error in type.convert(data[[i]], as.is = as.is[i], dec = dec, 
>> na.strings = character(0)) :
>> invalid multibyte string at '?????'
>>
>> So I copied it all over to a text document and tried to import that, 
>> thus:
>>  > read.table("A5.txt")
>>
>> The error I got then was:
>>
>> Error in scan(file, what, nmax, sep, dec, quote, skip, nlines, 
>> na.strings, :
>> line 26 did not have 34 elements
>>
>> Having gone over the line in question, it all seems to be the same as 
>> any other row. I really don't want to have to manually re-enter the 
>> data (some 98 rows x 26 columns).
>>
>> Can someone advise me on what I am overlooking here please.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Andy
>>
>>   
>
That did it - thanks!!

Very steep learning curve ... so appreciate your help.

Cheers

Andy

-- 

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"