Rstudio: Trouble Uploading an Excel File. "No Package Called 'Pkgconfig'

Question

I was able to import an excel spreadsheet into RStudio and work on it while at work, so I decided to email myself the same spreadsheet and work on it at home as well. When I downloaded the excel file and tried to import it into the RStudio environment at home, I get this error message:

"Is this a valid Excel file? there is no package called 'pkgconfig'"

I've tried a fresh install of R and RStudio, simply installing pkgconfig, and updating as many packages as possible and I still receive this error message.

I also tried converting the Excel file to a .csv where I received a similar error message, "there is no package called 'pkgconfig'".

In trying this code:

library(readxl)

FinancialSpreadsheet <- read_excel("FinancialSpreadsheet.xlsx")

I receive:

Error in loadNamespace(j <- i[[1L]], c(lib.loc, .libPaths()), versionCheck = vI[[j]]) : there is no package called ‘pkgconfig’

I feel I am possibly overlooking something obvious because I am fairly new to this language and software. Thank you for any help.

Answer 1

This actually just answered my question! Apparently R was storing packages in a different place than where it was looking to pull those packages from.

Answer 2

Part of the problem was pkgconfig was not installed
also, with windows, the current directory often changes and should never be relied on. You can use an if statement combined with something like file.exists(fileNamePath) to perform a test.
read_excel requires parameters to be set up path should point to a file-name-path

Must Read

example

....
  #install up required packages
install.packages("pkgconfig")
install.packages("Rcpp")
install.packages("readxl")

  #load up required packages
library(pkgconfig)
library(Rcpp)
library(readxl)

  #load up an excel spreadsheet into a variable object called datasets
filePath <- "C:/.../extdata/evaluation/"

fileName <- 'GPW Detailed Tables March 2019 - STP.xlsx'
fileNamePath <- paste0(filePath, fileName)

  #TEST FILE is where you think it is
file.exists(fileNamePath)

#read_excel(datasets)
#FinancialSpreadsheet <- read_excel("FinancialSpreadsheet.xlsx")

#return data into a tibble Data Frame
datasets <- read_xlsx(path = fileNamePath, 
                      sheet = '1a', 
                      range = "D18:L26")

#return data result to the terminal screen
read_excel(path = fileNamePath, 
           sheet = '1a', 
           range = "D18:L26")
....

example O/P using a spreadsheet on my box

....

> fileNamePath <- paste0(filePath, fileName)
> file.exists(fileNamePath)
[1] TRUE
> datasets <- read_xlsx(path = fileNamePath, 
+                       sheet = '1a', 
+                       range = "D18:L26")
New names:
* `` -> ...2
* `` -> ...3
> 

> read_excel(path = fileNamePath, 
+            sheet = '1a', 
+            range = "D18:L26")
New names:
* `` -> ...2
* `` -> ...3
# A tibble: 8 x 9
  `Lancashire and South C~ ...2  ...3               `1263` `689` `255` `8`   `185` `145`
  <chr>                    <lgl> <chr>               <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <chr> <dbl> <dbl>
1 00Q                      NA    NHS Blackburn wit~    110    65    19 -        11    16
2 00R                      NA    NHS Blackpool CCG      97    56    16 1        17     8
3 00X                      NA    NHS Chorley and S~    125    59    33 1        18    14
4 01A                      NA    NHS East Lancashi~    313   153    61 2        41    63
5 01E                      NA    NHS Greater Prest~    148    68    35 2        32    13
6 01K                      NA    NHS Morecambe Bay~    279   176    60 2        34     8
7 02G                      NA    NHS West Lancashi~     72    42    10 -         8    13
8 02M                      NA    NHS Fylde and Wyr~    130    71    23 -        24    13
> 

....

Rstudio: Trouble Uploading an Excel File. "No Package Called 'Pkgconfig'

2 Answers

Must Read

example

example O/P using a spreadsheet on my box

Marcus Vance