Integer and character import from Excel to R
<p>I am trying to import a <code>.xls</code>-file that has the following structure:</p>

<p>praefix number ID</p>

<p>A 1 A01</p>

<p>A 2 A02</p>

<p>and so on. By exporting it to a .csv and running <code>read.csv2()</code> works fine. However, if I run <code>read.xls()</code> from gdata I messes up the ID-column. I understand these are stored as integer, rather than character. I could surely write a function [<code>paste(preafix, sprintf(number))</code>] to replace the column, but this is not the nice way to try. Any ideas?</p>

<p>Alternatively, I have tried to use <code>read.ods()</code>, however these packages will not install due to dependency issues. <code>read_excel()</code> has the same behavior as <code>read.xls()</code>.</p>