Read only certain columns from xls

Question

I have an excel spreadsheet with several sheets. The format is as below:

Date        A       B       C       D       E       F                       Referenc         


        

Answer 1

You can use library XLConnect to read .xls files. Function readWorksheet() lets you set columns and rows you need to import.

library(XLConnect)
wb<-loadWorkbook("wb.xls")
data <- readWorksheet(wb, sheet = "Sheet1",startCol=1,endCol=7)

Answer 2

Another option is to use is to use Excel named range with RODBC.

channel<-odbcConnectExcel(paste(Repository,excelFile, sep = "/"))
ConsoTab<-sqlFetch(channel,NamesRangeAF)
odbcClose(channel)

Here NamesRangeAF is your Excel named Range.

Answer 3

With the readxl package using read_xlsx you can specify the range. Use read_xls or read_excel depending on file type.

library(readxl)
df <- read_xlsx(path = "filename.xlsx", sheet = "sheetname", range = cell_cols("A:G"))