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Asked: 2026-05-16T07:30:57+00:00

Installing the RODBC package on Ubuntu is a bit of a kludge. First I

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Installing the RODBC package on Ubuntu is a bit of a kludge. First I learned to install the following: 

$ sudo apt-get install r-cran-rodbc

That wasn’t good enough as the package was still looking for header files. I solved this issue by:

$ sudo apt-get install unixodbc-dev

Good, RODBC installed properly on the Ubuntu machine. But when I try to run the following script:

## import excel file from Dropbox

require("RODBC")

channel <- odbcConnectExcel("~/Dropbox/DATA/SAMPLE/petro.xls")

petro <- sqlFetch (channel, "weekly")

odbcClose(channel)

str(petro)
head(petro)

I get an error thrown that function odbcConnectExcel not found. I checked the case of each letter, making sure it was not a simple typo. Nope. Then I ran this same script on a Windows R installation (file path different, of course) and the script works.

Any idea of why Ubuntu R installation cannot find the odbcConnectExcel function and how I can get this to work?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    That functionality is available where Excel is available. In other words: not on Ubuntu.

    For reference, from the R Data Import / Export manual (with my highlighting):

    4.3.2 Package RODBC

    Package RODBC on CRAN provides an
    interface to database sources
    supporting an ODBC interface. This is
    very widely available, and allows the
    same R code to access different
    database systems. RODBC runs on
    Unix/Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, and
    almost all database systems provide
    support for ODBC. We have tested
    Microsoft SQL Server, Access, MySQL,
    PostgreSQL, Oracle and IBM DB2 on
    Windows and MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL
    and SQLite on Linux.

    ODBC is a client-server system, and we
    have happily connected to a DBMS
    running on a Unix server from a
    Windows client, and vice versa.

    On Windows ODBC support is normally
    installed, and current versions are
    available from
    http://www.microsoft.com/data/odbc/ as
    part of MDAC. On Unix/Linux you will
    need an ODBC Driver Manager such as
    unixODBC (http://www.unixODBC.org) or
    iOBDC (http://www.iODBC.org: this is
    pre-installed in Mac OS X) and an
    installed driver for your database
    system.

    Windows provides drivers not just for
    DBMSs but also for Excel (.xls)
    spreadsheets,     DBase (.dbf) files and
    even text files. (The named
    applications do not need to be
    installed. Which file formats are
    supported depends on the the versions
    of the drivers.) There are versions
    for Excel 2007 and Access 2007 (go to
    http://download.microsoft.com, and
    search for Office ODBC, which will
    lead to AccessDatabaseEngine.exe), the
    `2007 Office System Driver’.

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