On a related note, there's one other amazingly stupid thing that Excel (2002 SP3) does - it exports to CSV the numbers as you see them displayed, and not as they were entered/imported in the first place. For example, 1.2345678 will be exported to CSV/tab delimited as 1.23 if that column is formatted to show 2 decimals. Whoever doesn't pay attention gets what s/he deserves for trusting Excel in the first place.
> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Scott > Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 10:11 PM > To: r-help@stat.math.ethz.ch > Subject: [R] Excel > > > A common process when data is obtained in an Excel > spreadsheet is to save > the spreadsheet as a .csv file then read it into R. Experienced users > might have learned to be wary of dates (as I have) but > possibly have not > experienced what just happened to me. I thought I might just > share it with > r-help as a cautionary tale. > > I received an Excel file giving patient details. Each patient > had an ID > code in the form of three letters followed by four digits. > (Actually a New > Zealand National Health Identification.) I saved the .xls > file as .csv. > Then I opened up the .csv (with Excel) to look at it. In the > column of ID > codes I saw: Aug-99. Clicking on that entry it showed 1/08/2699. > > In a column of character data, Excel had interpreted AUG2699 > as a date. > > The .csv did not actually have a date in that cell, but if I > had saved the > .csv file it would have. > > David Scott > > _________________________________________________________________ > David Scott Department of Statistics, Tamaki Campus > The University of Auckland, PB 92019 > Auckland 1142, NEW ZEALAND > Phone: +64 9 373 7599 ext 86830 Fax: +64 9 373 7000 > Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Graduate Officer, Department of Statistics > Director of Consulting, Department of Statistics > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.