Try reading the csv file with, say, Notepad. I think you may find that the problem is that Excel assumes the column is numeric and strips off the zeros before saving the file. So you need to tell it that the ID columns are character before saving.
Then you need to read the Help page for read.csv more carefully, noting, in particular, the "colClasses" argument. -- Bert On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:43 PM, James Splinter <james.r.splin...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > I have a data set, with some numerical values, some non-numerical data, my > issue is that I need to preserve my ID numbers (numerics) with the leading > zeros, but when I import the data into R (it's in .csv format) using the > read.csv(" ") command, it turns all the ID numbers (Example: 00210) into > numbers, removing the leading zeros, so I end up with 210. I tried using the > "as.is=" command on the column that I wanted to treat as text, but it had no > effect. > > Any help would be very much appreciated, > > Thanks, > > James > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics 467-7374 http://devo.gene.com/groups/devo/depts/ncb/home.shtml ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.