R - Excel File

Microsoft Excel is the most widely used spreadsheet program which stores data in the .xls or .xlsx format. R can read directly from these files using some excel specific packages. Few such packages are - XLConnect, xlsx, gdata etc. We will be using xlsx package. R can also write into excel file using this package.

Install xlsx Package

You can use the following command in the R console to install the "xlsx" package. It may ask to install some additional packages on which this package is dependent. Follow the same command with required package name to install the additional packages.

install.packages("xlsx")

Verify and Load the "xlsx" Package

Use the following command to verify and load the "xlsx" package.

# Verify the package is installed.
any(grepl("xlsx",installed.packages()))

# Load the library into R workspace.
library("xlsx")

When the script is run we get the following output.

[1] TRUE
Loading required package: rJava
Loading required package: methods
Loading required package: xlsxjars

Input as xlsx File

Open Microsoft excel. Copy and paste the following data in the work sheet named as sheet1.

id name      salary    start_date dept
1 Rick   623.3     1/1/2012 IT
2 Dan       515.2     9/23/2013   Operations
3 Michelle  611     11/15/2014 IT
4 Ryan   729     5/11/2014 HR
5 Gary   843.25    3/27/2015 Finance
6 Nina   578       5/21/2013 IT
7 Simon   632.8     7/30/2013 Operations
8 Guru   722.5     6/17/2014 Finance

Also copy and paste the following data to another worksheet and rename this worksheet to "city".

name  city
Rick  Seattle
Dan      Tampa
Michelle Chicago
Ryan  Seattle
Gary  Houston
Nina  Boston
Simon  Mumbai
Guru  Dallas

Save the Excel file as "input.xlsx". You should save it in the current working directory of the R workspace.

Reading the Excel File

The input.xlsx is read by using the read.xlsx() function as shown below. The result is stored as a data frame in the R environment.

# Read the first worksheet in the file input.xlsx.
data <- read.xlsx("input.xlsx", sheetIndex = 1)
print(data)

When we execute the above code, it produces the following result −

      id,   name,    salary,   start_date,     dept
1      1    Rick     623.30    2012-01-01      IT
2      2    Dan      515.20    2013-09-23      Operations
3      3    Michelle 611.00    2014-11-15      IT
4      4    Ryan     729.00    2014-05-11      HR
5     NA    Gary     843.25    2015-03-27      Finance
6      6    Nina     578.00    2013-05-21      IT
7      7    Simon    632.80    2013-07-30      Operations
8      8    Guru     722.50    2014-06-17      Finance