Issue when importing dataset Error in scan line 1 did not have 145 elements

Question

I m trying to import my dataset in R using read table     Dataset df  lt - read table  C   dataset txt   header TRUE    But I get the following error message   Error in scan file  what  nmax  sep  dec  quote  skip  nlines  na strings        line 1 did not have 145 elements   What does this mean and how can I fix it

User · Answer

When running into this error and reviewing my dataset which appeared to have no missing data  I discovered that a few of my entries had the special character     which derailed importing the data   Once I removed the     from the offending cells  the data imported without issue

User · Answer

Hash   symbol creating this error  if you can remove the   from the start of the column name  it could fix the problem    Basically  when the column name starts with   in between rows  read table   will recognise as a starting point for that row

User · Answer

I encountered this error when I had a row names  id   per the tutorial  with a column named  id

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One of my variables was categorical with one alternative being multi string   no event    When I used read table  it assumed that the space after the first string meant the end of the data point and the second string was pushed to the next variable  I used sep    t  to solve the problem  I was using RStudio in a Mac OX environment  A previous solution was to transform  txt files to  csv in Excel  and afterwards open them with read csv function

User · Answer

For others who can t find a solution and know the data isn t missing elements   I have this issue when I use Excel 2013 to save files as  csv and then try to load them in R using read table    The workaround I have found is to paste the data straight from Excel into a  txt document  then open with   read table file choose    sep   t      I hope this helps

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I encountered this issue while importing some of the files from the Add Health data into R  see  http   www icpsr umich edu icpsrweb ICPSR studies 21600 archive ICPSR amp q 21600   For example  the following command to read the DS12 data file in tab separated  tsv format will generate the following error   ds12  lt - read table  21600-0012-Data tsv   sep   t   comment char      quote         header TRUE   Error in scan file  what  nmax  sep  dec  quote  skip  nlines   na strings     line 2390 did not have 1851 elements   It appears there is a slight formatting issue with some of the files that causes R to reject the file  At least part of the issue appears to be the occasional use of double quotes instead of an apostrophe that causes an uneven number of double quote characters in a line   After fiddling  I ve identified three possible solutions    Open the file in a text editor and search replace all instances of a quote character   with nothing  In other words  delete all double quotes  For this tab-delimited data  this meant only that some verbatim excerpts of comments from subjects were no longer in quotes which was a non-issue for my data analysis  With data stored on ICPSR  see link above  or other archives another solution is to download the data in a new format  A good option in this case is to download the Stata version of the DS12 and then open it using the read dta command as follows   library foreign  ds12  lt - read dta  21600-0012-Data dta    A related solution hack is to open the  tsv file in Excel and re-save it as a tab separated text file  This seems to clean up whatever formatting issue makes R unhappy    None of these are ideal in that they don t quite solve the problem in R with the original  tsv file but data wrangling often requires the use of multiple programs and formats

User · Answer

This error is pretty self-explanatory  There seem to be data missing in the first line of your data file  or second line  as the case may be since you re using header   TRUE    Here s a mini example      Create a small dataset to play with cat  V1 V2 nFirst 1 2 nSecond 2 nThird 3 8 n   file  test txt     R automatically detects that it should expect rownames plus two columns  3 elements   but it doesn t find 3 elements on line 2  so you get an error   read table  test txt   header   TRUE    Error in scan file  what  nmax  sep  dec  quote  skip  nlines  na strings          line 2 did not have 3 elements   Look at the data file and see if there is indeed a problem   cat readLines  test txt    sep     n     V1 V2   First 1 2   Second 2   Third 3 8   Manual correction might be needed  or we can assume that the value first value in the  Second  row line should be in the first column  and other values should be NA  If this is the case  fill   TRUE is enough to solve your problem   read table  test txt   header   TRUE  fill   TRUE           V1 V2   First   1  2   Second  2 NA   Third   3  8     R is also smart enough to figure it out how many elements it needs even if rownames are missing   cat  V1 V2 n1 n2 5 n3 8 n   file  test2 txt   cat readLines  test2 txt    sep     n     V1 V2   1   2 5   3 8 read table  test2 txt   header   TRUE    Error in scan file  what  nmax  sep  dec  quote  skip  nlines  na strings          line 1 did not have 2 elements read table  test2 txt   header   TRUE  fill   TRUE      V1 V2   1  1 NA   2  2  5   3  3  8

User · Answer

If you are using linux  and the data file is from windows  It probably because the character  M Find it and delete  done

User · Answer

This simple method solved the problem for me  Copy the content of your dataset  open an empty Excel sheet  choose  Paste Special  -   Values   and save  Import the new file instead    I tried all the existing solutions  and none worked for me  My old dataset appeared to have no missing values  space  special characters  or embedded formulas

User · Answer

I have faced same issue while trying to read data from file in R  After figuring out I found out that sep value is causing this issue  Once I tried this with correct separator it was working as expected  read table  quot file location file name quot       sep  quot   quot    exact separator as given in file  also  quot   quot  or  quot  t quot  etc      col names c  quot name 1 quot    quot name 2 quot

User · Answer

Beside all the guidance mentioned above you can also check all the data   If there are blanks between words  you must replace them with       However that how I solve my own problem

[r] Issue when importing dataset: `Error in scan(...): line 1 did not have 145 elements`

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