Skip to content

open xlsx file using read.xls function of gdata package

3 messages · Luigi Marongiu, Jeff Newmiller, Hadley Wickham

Luigi Marongiu
# 
Dear all,
I am trying to open excel files using the gdata package. I can do that
using a .xls file, but the same file, containing the same data,
formatted in .xlsx gives error (R does not recognize the pattern from
where to start reading the data).
Doen anybody knows whether it is possible to read .xlslx with this package?
Am I missing another package to implement the reading of the .xlsx?
Thank you
Luigi

PS: this is the error I get:
+       my.file,
+       sheet="sheet x",
+       verbose=FALSE,
+       pattern="row name",
+       na.strings=c("NA","#DIV/0!"),
+       method="tab",
+       perl="perl"
+     )
In read.xls(my.file, sheet = "sheet x", verbose = FALSE,  :
  pattern not found


The verbose version runs like this:
    ?array.xlsx?
to tab  file
    ?/tmp/Rtmp2tAjzz/filef06102dd018.tab?
...

Executing ' '/usr/bin/perl'
'/home/gigiux/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0/gdata/perl/xls2tab.pl'
 'array.xlsx' '/tmp/Rtmp2tAjzz/filef06102dd018.tab' 'sheet x' '...

Loading 'array.xlsx'...
Done.

Orignal Filename: array.xlsx
Number of Sheets: 2

Writing sheet 'sheet x' to file '/tmp/Rtmp2tAjzz/filef06102dd018.tab'
Minrow=31 Maxrow=17310 Mincol=0 Maxcol=4
  (Ignored 0 blank lines.)

0

Done.

Searching for lines tfntaining pattern  row name ...
Warning message:
In read.xls(my.file, sheet = "sheet x", verbose = TRUE,  :
  pattern not found
Jeff Newmiller
# 
I had poor luck with gdata. I have had better luck with XLConnect. There is no single best package for this, since each seems to leverage efforts made in other languages (so there are non-R configuration requirements to keep working) and Excel is a proprietary moving target. In general YMMV when it comes to Excel data. In most cases I just export the data to CSV and avoid the issue.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Newmiller                        The     .....       .....  Go Live...
DCN:<jdnewmil at dcn.davis.ca.us>        Basics: ##.#.       ##.#.  Live Go...
                                      Live:   OO#.. Dead: OO#..  Playing
Research Engineer (Solar/Batteries            O.O#.       #.O#.  with
/Software/Embedded Controllers)               .OO#.       .OO#.  rocks...1k
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.
On April 3, 2015 11:24:29 AM PDT, Luigi Marongiu <marongiu.luigi at gmail.com> wrote:
Hadley Wickham
# 
You might try the readxl package - it's only available on github but it
reads both xlsx and xls. All going well, it should be on its way to CRAN
next week.

Hadley
On Friday, April 3, 2015, Luigi Marongiu <marongiu.luigi at gmail.com> wrote: