How to save a series of xls spreadsheets in csv using R?

Question

I have 198 spreadsheets all in Excel (xls format) and I need to pass them to the format . csv so you can work with them in R. These sheets are saved inside a folder on my computer all of them in format . xls

After turning them to. csv need to unite all of them in order to obtain a table of similarity, containing in the lines my areas of study and in the columns my plant species, filling with data of abundance of species for each sampled area. In addition to the similarity, I need to calculate parameters that are structuring my plant communities such as frequency, density and dominance.

So, at first, I would like to have a command in R where it can automatically transform my tables . xls into . csv so I can start my journey, since it will take me a long time to save one by one...

Can anyone answer me how I do it using the R?

Thank you!!!

Answer 1

If all these worksheets are in a single folder, you can use something like this. I’m guessing that all worksheets have the same format.

plans <- list.files("caminho/da/pasta", full.names = T)
bases <- plyr::ldply(plans, readxl::read_excel)

If they can’t and you still want to save how csv to work easier on R, you can do something like this:

plans <- list.files("caminho/da/pasta", full.names = T)
plyr::l_ply(plans, function(p){
    b <- readxl::read_excel(p)
    write.csv2(b, file = gsub("xls", "csv", p))
})

Answer 2

It is not necessary to convert an excel spreadsheet (assuming that this means .xls or .xlsx extension files) into . csv to work with it on R. Install the package xlsx and its dependencies to run the command

library(xlsx)
dados <- read.xlsx(file="planilha.xlsx", sheetIndex=1)

In this example, I only imported the first sheet present in the file planilha.xlsx. Just adapt this code to your needs.