calling R from excel VB

R is a very good tool for data visualization and for generating reports apart from the large number of statistical packages it has to offer.

While in legacy systems data manipulation is done in excel.

This post will describe how to make these two systems talk - calling R code from Excel.


The utility for this tool would be when there is a legacy system that is difficult to change because of a number of dependencies on the up or downstream but one needs a capability that R is very strong at - be it statistical or data visualization and when one needs to execute the R code once certain steps are finished in excel




Here's the steps to follow:

1. Have the R code that you want to execute at a location: lets' say
C:/Users/kishorea/Desktop/summary_variance_code.txt
here, summary_variance_code.txt is the text file which contains R code

2. Execute the shell command from excel macro: Developer -> Create macro

Call Shell("C:/Program Files/R/R-2.12.2/bin/Rscript.exe C:/Users/kishorea/Desktop/summary_variance_code.txt")

Step 2 opens up the command window and executes the R script.


There you go, R running from excel