Colleagues, I have 250 Excel files in a directory. Each of those files has the same layout. The problem is that the data in each Excel data is not in rectangular form. I've been using readxl to extract the data which I need. Each of my metrics are stored in a particular cell. For each metric, I create text files which stores my metrics. library(plyr) library(readxl) files <- list.files(pattern="*.xls", full.names = FALSE) # Extract Work Order WO <- lapply(files, read_excel, sheet="Sheet1", range=("B9")) WO_list <- as.data.frame(WO) trans_WO <- t(WO_list) write.table(trans_WO ,"WO.txt") # Extract bubble 14_1 BUBBLE_14_1 <- lapply(files, read_excel, sheet="Sheet1", range=("c46")) BUBBLE_14_1_list <- as.data.frame(BUBBLE_14_1) trans_BUBBLE_14_1 <- t(BUBBLE_14_1_list) write.table(trans_BUBBLE_14_1,"BUBBLE_14_1.txt") # Extract bubble 14_2 BUBBLE_14_2 <- lapply(files, read_excel, sheet="Sheet1", range=("c62")) BUBBLE_14_2_list <- as.data.frame(BUBBLE_14_2) trans_BUBBLE_14_2 <- t(BUBBLE_14_2_list) write.table(trans_BUBBLE_14_2,"BUBBLE_14_2.txt") After the text files have been created, I cut and paste each column of data to Excel. This has worked fine if the number of cells I am extracting from a file is small. If the number gets larger, this method is inefficient. Any advice on how to do this would be appreciated. All the best, Thomas Subia [[alternative HTML version deleted]]