Importing *cell-formatting* information from excel file into R
r, xls, xlsx
Solution
This is a very old question but still comes up in searches so I think it is useful to point people toward the `tidyxl` package.
`tidyxl::xlsx_cells()` reads an Excel spreadsheet in as a data frame where each row represents a single cell of the spreadsheet, with its address (e.g. `A1`), contents, and properties.
`tidyxl::xlsx_formats()` returns a nested list of all the different cell formats in the Excel spreadsheet.
The `local_format_id` column in the data frame returned by `xlsx_cells()` allows you to look up the formatting information for each cell in the list returned by `xlsx_formats()`.
More information is included in the tidyxl package vignette.
Problem
I have been given excel files (`.xlsx`) where the format of the cell is relevant information which I need to capture. The key formatting of interest are (1) cell color and (2) border (left + right, full box or absent). Is it possible to read this into R?