Read all worksheets in an Excel workbook into an R list with data.frames

📝 Read all Worksheets in an Excel Workbook into an R List with Data Frames

Are you tired of manually importing each worksheet from an Excel workbook into R? Do you want a quick and easy solution to import all worksheets at once and organize them into a list of data frames? Look no further, as we have the perfect solution for you!

The Problem

Let's say you have an Excel workbook with multiple worksheets, and you want to import all of them into R. However, using the readWorksheetFromFile function from the XLConnect package, as shown in the example, only allows you to import one worksheet at a time.

library(XLConnect)
readWorksheetFromFile('test.xls', sheet = 1)

The Solution

To import all worksheets in a workbook into a list in R, where each element of the list corresponds to a worksheet's name, we can make use of the lapply function along with some file manipulation techniques. Here's how you can do it:

library(XLConnect)

# Provide the path to your Excel workbook
workbook_path <- 'path/to/your/workbook.xls'

# Load all worksheets from the workbook into a list of data frames
worksheet_list <- lapply(getSheets(loadWorkbook(workbook_path)), 
                         function(sheet) readWorksheet(loadWorkbook(workbook_path), sheet))

# Set the names of the list elements to the worksheet names
names(worksheet_list) <- getSheets(loadWorkbook(workbook_path))

# Now you can access each worksheet's data frame using the worksheet name
worksheet_list$Sheet1
worksheet_list$Sheet2
# ...

This code snippet uses the loadWorkbook function from XLConnect to load the workbook into R. Then, the getSheets function retrieves the names of all the worksheets in the workbook. With the lapply function, we iterate over each worksheet, reading it into a data frame using the readWorksheet function. Finally, we set the names of the list elements to the corresponding worksheet names.

Now you can easily access the data frames of each worksheet using their names, just like in the example above.

Conclusion

In this guide, we have shown you an easy and efficient way to import all worksheets from an Excel workbook into R. By using the lapply function and some useful functions from the XLConnect package, you can now save time and effort when working with Excel data in R.

So, why waste any more time? Give it a try and start exploring your Excel workbooks with ease!

🔥 Don't forget to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below. We'd love to hear from you! Happy coding! ❤️