[R] Import from excel 2007

[Marc Schwartz]

On Wed, 2007-10-17 at 11:53 -0500, Earl F. Glynn wrote:
> "Marc Schwartz" <marc_schwartz at comcast.net> wrote in message 
> news:1192550659.3526.20.camel at Bellerophon.localdomain...
> > On Tue, 2007-10-16 at 14:38 +0100, Arnold Akem wrote:
> >> Hey Seniors,
> >>
> >>   Really new to R, please has anyone imported a dataset from MS office
> >> excel 2007 into R yet? It seem to be giving me hard times which I did
> >> not expect as it use to go well with the previous versions.
> >>
> >>   Thanks in advance.
> >>   arnoldo
> >
> >
> > Office 2007 is using a new format (.xlsx, .docx, etc.) that is not yet
> > compatible with most applications (including OpenOffice), since MS does
> > not document it.
> >
> > The best thing to do is to save the Excel file as a .CSV file and then
> > use read.csv() to import the data.
> 
> Your question made me curious about RODBC and Excel, so I ran a test using 
> Excel 2007.
> 
> Using RODBC (Version 1.2-1) with R 2.6.0 with Windows Vista, I cannot read 
> any of the new Excel formats, which there are three:
> 
> .xlsx - Excel Workbook
> .xlsb - Excel Binary Workbook
> .xlsm - Excel Macro-Enable Workbook
> 
> I get the same error for all three:  "ODBC Excel Driver Logic Failed: 
> External table is not in the expected format."
> 
> When saving new Excel 2007 files, you can select "Save As" and "Excel 
> 97-2003 Workbook" and use those .xls files like before with RODBC in R.
> 
> But be careful using RODBC and Excel, such as this problem:
> 
> RODBC and Excel: Wrong Data Type Assumed on Import
> http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/05/11/14938.html

This might be a question along the lines of "is it plugged in?", but do
you have the Office 2007 version of the ODBC drivers installed?

If not, then your results would not be a surprise.

If you do, then we should get Prof. Ripley involved here, as we did have
a brief offlist communication on this yesterday, thinking that RODBC
"should" work if the proper version of the ODBC drivers are installed.

Let us know.

Thanks,

Marc