3.2 Importing Excel Files

One way to get Excel files directly into R is by using the XLConnect package. For this example, you will need the “happy.xlsx” file. Check if the file is in your project directory. If not, you can download it here.

Install the package, and try using the readWorksheetFromFile() function to load the data, and assign it to an object called df:

# Run this only once, to download and install the package:
install.packages("XLConnect")
# Load the package:
library(XLConnect)
# Read the 'Happy to help' Excel file into 'df':
df <- readWorksheetFromFile("happy.xlsx",
                            sheet = 1)

3.2.1 Inspect the data

R does not work with a single spreadsheet (SPSS or Excel). Instead, it can keep many objects in memory. The object df is a data.frame; an object that behaves similar to a spreadsheet. To see a description of the object, look at the Environment tab in the top right of Rstudio, and click the arrow next to df.

As you can see, the on the top-right pane Environment, your file is now listed as a data set in your RStudio environment.

You can make a quick copy of this data set by assigning the df object to a new object. This way, you can edit one, and leave the other unchanged. Assign the object df to a new object called happy:

happy <- df

You can also have a look at the contents of df by clicking the object in the Environment panel, or running the command head(df):

Here’s a (shortened) table for the data

study_id	d	vi	n1i	n2c	sex	age	location	donorcode	interventioncode	controlcode	recipients	outcomecode
Aknin, Barrington-Leigh, et al. (2013) Study 3	0.46	0.0205290	100	100	38	21.0	Canada / South Africa	Typical	Prosocial Spending	Self Help	Anonymous Sick Children	PN Affect
Aknin, Barrington-Leigh, et al. (2013) Study 3	0.13	0.0200422	100	100	38	21.0	Canada / South Africa	Typical	Prosocial Spending	Self Help	Anonymous Sick Children	Life Satisfaction
Aknin, Broesch, et al. (2015) Study 1	0.93	0.1704788	13	13	42	45.0	Vanuatu	Typical	Prosocial Spending	Self Help	Family / Friends	PN Affect
Aknin, Broesch, et al. (2015) Study 2	0.30	0.1011250	20	20	70	3.0	Vanuatu	Typical	Other	Neutral Activity	Puppet	Other
Aknin, Dunn, et al. (2013) Study 3	0.24	0.0805760	25	25	34	21.0	Canada	Typical	Prosocial Spending	Self Help	Someone	Other
Aknin, Fleerackers, et al. (2014)	0.38	0.0342225	60	59	41	19.9	USA	Typical	Prosocial Spending	Self Help	Anonymous Sick Children	PN Affect

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