[R] Cleaning up messy Excel data

John Kane jrkrideau at inbox.com
Wed Feb 29 16:43:25 CET 2012


(mydata <- as.factor(c("1","2","3", ">2", "5", ">2")))
str(mydata)

newdata <- as.character(mydata)

newdata[newdata==">2"] <- 0
newdata <- as.numeric(newdata)
str(newdata)

We really need to keep Excel (and other spreadsheets) out of peoples hands.

John Kane
Kingston ON Canada


> -----Original Message-----
> From: noahsilverman at ucla.edu
> Sent: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:27:13 -0800
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Cleaning up messy Excel data
> 
> Unfortunately, some data I need to work with was delivered in a rather
> messy Excel file.  I want to import into R and clean up some things so
> that I can do my analysis.  Pulling in a CSV from Excel is the easy part.
> 
> My current challenge is dealing with some text mixed in the values.
> i.e.   118   5.7   <2.0  3.7
> 
> Since this column in Excel has a "<2.0" value, then R reads the column as
> a factor with levels.  Ideally, I want to convert it a normal vector of
> scalars and code code the "<2.0" as 0.
> 
> Can anyone suggest an easy way to do this?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> 
> --
> Noah Silverman
> UCLA Department of Statistics
> 8117 Math Sciences Building
> Los Angeles, CA 90095
> 
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

____________________________________________________________
FREE ONLINE PHOTOSHARING - Share your photos online with your friends and family!
Visit http://www.inbox.com/photosharing to find out more!



More information about the R-help mailing list