Hi, You may try: dat1<- structure(list(Date.Time = c("C", "C", "C"), Unit = c(23L, 23L, 22L), Value = c(207L, 82L, 894L)), .Names = c("Date.Time", "Unit", "Value"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c("27/06/13 02:35:01", "27/06/13 02:50:01", "27/06/13 03:05:01")) dat2<-data.frame(Date.Time=row.names(dat1),Unit=dat1[,1],Value=as.numeric(paste(dat1[,2],sprintf("%03d",dat1[,3]),sep=".")) ,stringsAsFactors=FALSE) dat2 #????????? Date.Time Unit? Value #1 27/06/13 02:35:01??? C 23.207 #2 27/06/13 02:50:01??? C 23.082 #3 27/06/13 03:05:01??? C 22.894 #or ?lines1<-readLines("data1.csv") dat2New<-read.table(text=gsub("(.*),(.*)$","\\1.\\2",lines1[-1]),sep=",",header=FALSE,stringsAsFactors=FALSE) ?colnames(dat2New)<-strsplit(lines1[1],",")[[1]] ?dat2New #????????? Date/Time Unit? Value #1 27/06/13 02:35:01??? C 23.207 #2 27/06/13 02:50:01??? C 23.082 #3 27/06/13 03:05:01??? C 22.894 ?colnames(dat2)[1]<- colnames(dat2New)[1] ?identical(dat2,dat2New) #[1] TRUE A.K. Hi, I'm trying to import a csv file into R using read.csv. Here's the first part of the CSV: Date/Time,Unit,Value 27/06/13 02:35:01,C,23,207 27/06/13 02:50:01,C,23,082 27/06/13 03:05:01,C,22,894 When I import this to R using: data <- read.csv(file="", header =TRUE, skip=19) I get: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Date.Time Unit Value 27/06/13 02:35:01 ? ? ? ? C ? 23 ? 207 27/06/13 02:50:01 ? ? ? ? C ? 23 ? ?82 27/06/13 03:05:01 ? ? ? ? C ? 22 ? 894 All the names are shifted to the right and the column with temperature(Value) is split in two, probable because R thinks the Value is two different columns since its in the form of 23,207 instead of 23.207. Is there any way to make this right within R or do I have to manually change alle the Temperature values? Thanks!