R help - Sep 2011 - Reading Parts of Excel Files (within a sheet)

Dear R Users,

I have to read data from many excel spreadsheets, all which have some
frustrating formatting (lots of titles, headers, etc.).  I am trying
to work directly from source data and the number of the spreadsheets I
would have to go through make reformatting one by one a pain.  I have
found lots of ways to read excel files, but my question is whether
there is a way to only read "parts" of excel files.  Ex.  Specify
cells (A1:G20), specify rows and columns to start reading at? Or will
I have to hack things together after the fact?

The URL below will let you download an example .xls of the kind of
thing I am working with:
http://www.filedropper.com/exampletable_1
I only want/need the "Code" column names, and the "Code" row
names,
and the values. What would be the best way of automating the reading
of these spreadsheets?

Many thanks,
Peter

I haven't used it, but I believe the XLConnect package allows for control on
a cell-by-cell basis. Check out the extensive example given here:
http://www.r-bloggers.com/xlconnect-%E2%80%93-a-platform-independent-interface-to-excel/

Hope this helps,

Michael Weylandt

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 8:43 PM, Peter Lomas
<peter.lomas@ucalgary.ca>wrote:
> Dear R Users,
>
> I have to read data from many excel spreadsheets, all which have some
> frustrating formatting (lots of titles, headers, etc.).  I am trying
> to work directly from source data and the number of the spreadsheets I
> would have to go through make reformatting one by one a pain.  I have
> found lots of ways to read excel files, but my question is whether
> there is a way to only read "parts" of excel files.  Ex.  Specify
> cells (A1:G20), specify rows and columns to start reading at? Or will
> I have to hack things together after the fact?
>
> The URL below will let you download an example .xls of the kind of
> thing I am working with:
> http://www.filedropper.com/exampletable_1
> I only want/need the "Code" column names, and the
"Code" row names,
> and the values. What would be the best way of automating the reading
> of these spreadsheets?
>
> Many thanks,
> Peter
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@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.
>
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Hi Peter,

the readWorksheet function of the XLConnect package seems to do what you are
looking for. It has arguments startRow, startCol, endRow & endCol.
Alternatively, you could define a named region in Excel that encompasses the
data that you are interested in. Then you can use the readNamedRegion method
to read only the defined range.

Best regards,
Martin Studer

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