Reading a large xls file in R

Question

I have an excel file with ~ 10,000 rows and ~ 250 columns, I am currently using RODBC to import:

channel <- odbcConnectExcel(xls.file="s:/demo.xls") demo <- sqlFetch(channel,"Sheet_1") odbcClose(channel) 

But this method is a bit slow (I need a minute or two to import them), and excel is initially encrypted, I need to remove the password to work on it, which I prefer not to do, I wonder if there is a better way (i.e. import is faster and able to import encrypted excel files)

Thanks.

Answer 1

I recommend trying XLConnect instead of RODBC .

http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/XLConnect/index.html