Package {html2excel}

Type: Package
Title: Convert 'HTML' Tables to 'Excel' Files
Version: 1.0.1
Date: 2026-07-12
Description: Reads tables from 'HTML' web pages or local documents. The tables are returned as a list of 'tibbles' and may be written to 'Excel' files.
Imports: openxlsx, rvest, tools, utils
License: GPL (≥ 3)
Encoding: UTF-8
Depends: R (≥ 4.1.0)
Suggests: testthat (≥ 3.0.0)
URL: https://paulnorthrop.github.io/html2excel/, https://github.com/paulnorthrop/html2excel
BugReports: https://github.com/paulnorthrop/html2excel/issues
Config/testthat/edition: 3
RoxygenNote: 7.3.3
NeedsCompilation: no
Packaged: 2026-07-12 12:37:25 UTC; Paul
Author: Paul Northrop [aut, cre, cph]
Maintainer: Paul Northrop <p.northrop@ucl.ac.uk>
Repository: CRAN
Date/Publication: 2026-07-21 10:50:12 UTC

html2excel: Convert HTML Tables to Excel Files

Description

Reads tables from HTML web pages or local documents. The tables are returned as a list of tibbles and may be written to Excel files.

Details

The main function is html2excel. See also summary.html2excel.

Author(s)

Maintainer: Paul Northrop p.northrop@ucl.ac.uk [copyright holder]

See Also

Useful links:

Convert HTML Tables to Excel Files

Description

Reads tables from HTML documents using rvest::read_html and rvest::html_table. The tables are returned as tibbles and may be written to Excel .xlsx files using openxlsx::write.xlsx.

Usage

html2excel(
  html,
  ext = "*.html",
  write = TRUE,
  dir,
  sheets,
  read_args = list(),
  html_args = list(),
  write_args = list()
)

Arguments

html

A character vector containing one of the following:

  • paths to HTML files,

  • a path to a directory containing HTML files,

  • URLs, that is, strings beginning with www., ⁠http:⁠ or ⁠https:⁠.

ext

A character scalar. If html is a path to a directory, then ext determines the extensions of files that should be read from dir. The default is only to read files with an .html extension. utils::glob2rx(ext) is used to create the pattern argument to list.files. For example, if ext = "*.htm*" then all files with extensions that start with htm are read.

write

A logical scalar. Should the tibbles be written to Excel .xlsx files using openxlsx::write.xlsx?

dir

A path to a directory. If write = TRUE then dir determines where the Excel files are written.

  • If html contains URLs, then dir is an absolute path and must be supplied. To write Excel files to the current working directory use dir = ".".

  • If html contains paths to HTML files or a directory containing HTML files, then dir is relative to the directory in which an HTML file is located. If dir is not supplied then Excel files are written to the respective directories supplied in html.

If dir does not exist then it is created.

sheets

A numeric vector or list of numeric vectors. Component i of the vector or list gives the number(s) of the tables to be included as sheets in the ith output Excel file. This argument is recycled to the number of output Excel files. If sheets is not supplied then all sheets are included. summary.html2excel provides dimensions of the tibbles read.

read_args

A list of arguments for rvest::read_html.

html_args

A list of arguments for rvest::html_table.

write_args

A list of arguments for openxlsx::write.xlsx, but not file, as this is determined from html and dir.

Details

HTML files are

If rvest::read_html fails to connect to a URL in html then a message is printed and html is returned.

The output filename for an input HTML file file.html is usually file.xlsx. Exceptions are when a combination of html and ext means that duplicate filenames would be produced, for example, if files file.html and file.mhtml are read. Then the output filenames are distinguished by file_a.xlsx and file_b.xlsx, and similarly if there are more than two identical filenames.

The initial motivation for creating the html2excel package was to convert to Excel format HTML files that has mistakenly been given a .xlsx file extension. If such files are supplied by html then each output Excel file will be written to a directory output created in the directory of the respective input file.

Value

An object of class c("html2excel", "list"). A list of (lists of) tibbles created from objects returned from rvest::html_table. The names of the list are the input HTML filenames. Each list component is named sheet1, sheet2 etc. with each sheet containing a separate table found in the input HTML file. The numbering of these sheets is the same as the output .xlsx files, not the order of the tables in the input HTML files. If write = TRUE then a character vector containing the file paths to the .xlsx files created is added as an attributed named files.

See Also

summary.html2excel

Examples

### HTML files

## .html and .mhtml versions of the URL example below
html <- system.file("extdata", "tables.html", package = "html2excel")
mhtml <- system.file("extdata", "tables.mhtml", package = "html2excel")

## .html
# Table 5 only
t1 <- html2excel(html, sheets = 5, write = FALSE)
# The table
t1[[1]]
# The dimensions of the table
summary(t1)

## .mhtml
# Pass UTF-8 encoding to avoid error "Unsupported encoding: 3DUTF-8"
t2 <- html2excel(mhtml, read_args = list(encoding = "UTF-8"), write = FALSE)
# The same table as above
t2[[1]][5]
# The dimensions of all tables
summary(t2)

### A directory

## Contains the .html and .mhtml files above
directory <- system.file("extdata", package = "html2excel")
# Change the ext argument to include the .mhtml file
# Extract tables 3 and 5 from .html and table 5 from .mhtml
x <- html2excel(directory, ext = "*.*html", sheets = list(c(3, 5), 5),
                read_args = list(encoding = "UTF-8"), write = FALSE)

### A URL
url <- "https://afd.calpoly.edu/web/sample-tables"
x <- html2excel(url, write = FALSE)

Internal html2excel functions

Description

Internal html2excel functions

Usage

is_url(x)

is_directory(x)

urls_files_or_directory(x)

distinguish_repeated_filenames(vec)

change_xlsx_directory(filename, dir = "output")

Details

These functions are not intended to be called by the user.

Summarising html2excel objects

Description

summary method for class html2excel.

Usage

## S3 method for class 'html2excel'
summary(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'summary.html2excel'
print(x, ...)

Arguments

object

An object inheriting from class "html2excel" returned from html2excel.

...

Further arguments to be passed to print.default.

x

An object returned by summary.html2excel.

Details

The default print method for a list of tibbles prints the dimensions of the tibbles and up to 10 rows and 6 columns of each tibble. summary.html2excel prints a shorter summary that contains only the dimensions of the tibbles. These print and/or summary methods may be helpful in deciding which sheets are required for which excel file, that is, how to set the argument sheets to html2excel.

Value

A list containing the dimensions (number of rows and number of columns) of each tibble.

Examples

See html2excel.

See Also

html2excel.