Can R read unregular xlsx?

Question

I have so many(about 1,000) xlsx like the picture above. And I want to read every xlsx and get the data of every candatate's name, number and age. But I don't know how to read this unregular xlsx?

Answer 1

You can run the VBA code in Excel, and convert any number of XLSX files into CSV files. Then loop through all CSV files to merge all into a Data Frame in R.

Sub Convert_Excel_To_CSV()
    Dim MyPath As String, FilesInPath As String
    Dim MyFiles() As String, Fnum As Long
    Dim mybook As Workbook
    Dim CalcMode As Long
    Dim sh As Worksheet
    Dim ErrorYes As Boolean
    Dim LPosition As Integer

    'Fill in the path\folder where the Excel files are
    MyPath = "C:\Users\Ryan\Desktop\Excel_Files\"

    FilesInPath = Dir(MyPath & "*.xlsx*")
    If FilesInPath = "" Then
        MsgBox "No files found"
        Exit Sub
    End If

    Fnum = 0
    Do While FilesInPath <> ""
        Fnum = Fnum + 1
        ReDim Preserve MyFiles(1 To Fnum)
        MyFiles(Fnum) = FilesInPath
        FilesInPath = Dir()
    Loop

    With Application
        CalcMode = .Calculation
        .Calculation = xlCalculationManual
        .ScreenUpdating = False
        .EnableEvents = False
    End With

    If Fnum > 0 Then
        For Fnum = LBound(MyFiles) To UBound(MyFiles)
            Set mybook = Nothing
            On Error Resume Next
            Set mybook = Workbooks.Open(MyPath & MyFiles(Fnum))
            On Error GoTo 0

            If Not mybook Is Nothing Then


                    LPosition = InStr(1, mybook.Name, ".") - 1
                    mybookname = Left(mybook.Name, LPosition)
                    mybook.Activate
                    'All XLSX Files get saved in the directory below:
                    ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs Filename:="C:\your_path_here\" & mybookname & ".csv" _
                        , FileFormat:=xlCSVMSDOS, _
                        CreateBackup:=False

            End If

            mybook.Close SaveChanges:=False

        Next Fnum
    End If

    If ErrorYes = True Then
        MsgBox "There are problems in one or more files, possible problem:" _
             & vbNewLine & "protected workbook/sheet or a sheet/range that not exist"
    End If

    With Application
        .ScreenUpdating = True
        .EnableEvents = True
        .Calculation = CalcMode
    End With
End Sub






setwd("C:/your_path")
fnames <- list.files()
csv <- lapply(fnames, read.csv)
result <- do.call(rbind, csv)


********  ********  ********  ********  ********  ********  ********  ********  


filedir <- setwd("C:/your_path")
file_names <- dir(filedir)
your_data_frame <- do.call(rbind,lapply(file_names,read.csv))


********  ********  ********  ********  ********  ********  ********  ********  


filedir <- setwd("C:/your_path")
file_names <- dir(filedir)
your_data_frame <- do.call(rbind, lapply(file_names, read.csv, skip = 1, header = FALSE))


********  ********  ********  ********  ********  ********  ********  ********  


filedir <- setwd("C:/your_path")
file_names <- dir(filedir)
your_data_frame <- do.call(rbind, lapply(file_names, read.csv, header = FALSE))


********  ********  ********  ********  ********  ********  ********  ********  


# 
temp <- setwd("C:/your_path")
temp = list.files(pattern="*.csv")
myfiles = lapply(temp, read.delim)

Answer 2

I don't know if any R Excel API is smart enough to handle your column formatting, but there is an easy workaround. You can just save the above worksheet in CSV format. Doing this for the data you showed above left me with the following three CSV lines:

Title,,,,,
name,mike,number,123214,age,28
,score,,ddd,aaa,bbb

You can try the following code:

df <- read.csv(file="path/to/your/file.csv", header=FALSE)
df <- df[2:nrow(df), ]      # drop first row

To get the name, number, and age for Mike:

name   <- df[1, 2]
number <- df[1, 4]
age    <- df[1, 6]