[R] read.xls question

[David Scott]

On Sat, 14 Mar 2009, Mathew, Abraham T wrote:

> I'm an R newbie and had a question about the read.xls function. I've heard that this is often not a reliable function to use for importing data. However, I have created numerous xls files which contain information about voter turnout and macroeconomic indicators in India. I'm writing a paper on the relationship between economic growth and voter turnout.
>
> This is the command I use:
>
> data <- read.xls("India.xls", header=TRUE)
>
> I get the following error message:
> Error: could not find function "read.xls"
>
>
> Anyone have ideas?
> Thanks,
> Abraham
>
>

Since you are a beginner it is possible you missed a couple of steps. 
read.xls is part of the package xlsReadWrite so you need to first install 
that package, which is only possible if you are using Windows. Then you 
need to load the package with the command

library(xlsReadWrite)

Just checking on CRAN xlsReadWrite is not currently available. There is an 
archived version available however.

David Scott


_________________________________________________________________
David Scott	Department of Statistics
 		The University of Auckland, PB 92019
 		Auckland 1142,    NEW ZEALAND
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Email:	d.scott at auckland.ac.nz

Graduate Officer, Department of Statistics
Director of Consulting, Department of Statistics