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Can I specify data type in r for (like numeric, factor, character, etc) for each column of data frame as I import it from excel.

For example, if I have 3 columns (call them X1, X2, and X3) in a data frame (which I call X) and I want the column X1 to be a factor, column X2 to be numeric and column X3 to be character let say X (data frame) is an excel file, how do I import it into r?

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I recommend installing readxl package by Hadley Wickham and then loading it in R.

install.packages("readxl") library(readxl)

Then import the sheet you want in R and specifying the names and types you want

X <- read_excel("your_excel_file_name.xls (or .xlsx)", sheet = "X", col_names = c("X1", "X2", "X3"), col_types = c("factor", "numeric", "text"))

If you hadn't specified the arguments col_names, col_types then the function read_excel would have guessed the names and types. (Note that the result will be a tibble which is very similar to a data frame and I recommend using tibbles instead of data frames)

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Thank you for you help. I tried this: X <- read_excel("C:/Users/cuty/Desktop/DATA1.xls",# sheet = "X", col_names = c("X1", "X2", "X3"), col_types = c("factor", "numeric", "text")) and got this error message: Error: Illegal column type: 'factor' [1]
@economia what data type is the column X1 in excel?
X1 is "double" in typeof(X$X1)
@economia So it contains many different real numbers. Why would you want to make this a factor? Factors are categorical variables in R. In your call replace "factor" with "double"

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