Import & Merge Multiple CSV Files in R (2 Examples)

In this article, I’ll show you how to import and merge CSV files in the R programming language.

The page will contain the following topics:

2) Example 1: Import & Row-Bind CSV Files in R

3) Example 2: Import & Join CSV Files in R

Let’s do this!

Exemplifying Data

Before we can start with the examples, we need to create an exemplifying directory including multiple CSV files. First, we need to create several data frames…

data1 <- data.frame(id = 1:6,                       # Create first example data frame
                    x1 = c(5, 1, 4, 9, 1, 2),
                    x2 = c("A", "Y", "G", "F", "G", "Y"))
 
data2 <- data.frame(id = 4:9,                       # Create second example data frame
                    y1 = c(3, 3, 4, 1, 2, 9),
                    y2 = c("a", "x", "a", "x", "a", "x"))
 
data3 <- data.frame(id = 5:6,                       # Create third example data frame
                    z1 = c(3, 2),
                    z2 = c("K", "b"))

…and then we need to export these data frames as CSV files to our computer:

write.csv(data1, "C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/my_folder/data1.csv", # Write first example data
          row.names = FALSE)
write.csv(data2, "C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/my_folder/data2.csv", # Write second example data
          row.names = FALSE)
write.csv(data3, "C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/my_folder/data3.csv", # Write third example data
          row.names = FALSE)

example directory with csv files

Figure 1: Exemplifying Directory with CSV Files.

Figure 1 illustrates how our example directory looks like. Now let’s import and combine these data sets in RStudio…

Example 1: Import & Row-Bind CSV Files in R

We need three R add-on packages for the following R syntax: dplyr, plyr, and readr. Let’s install and load these packages to R.

install.packages("dplyr")                           # Install dplyr package
install.packages("plyr")                            # Install plyr package
install.packages("readr")                           # Install readr package
 
library("dplyr")                                    # Load dplyr package
library("plyr")                                     # Load plyr package
library("readr")                                    # Load readr package

Now, we can import and merge the example CSV files based on the list.files, lapply, read_csv, and bind_rows functions:

data_all <- list.files(path = "C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/my_folder",  # Identify all CSV files
                       pattern = "*.csv", full.names = TRUE) %>% 
  lapply(read_csv) %>%                              # Store all files in list
  bind_rows                                         # Combine data sets into one data set 
data_all                                            # Print data to RStudio console

tibble with merged data files r

Table 1: Tibble Containing Three Data Sets.

Table 1 shows the output of the previous R code. As you can see, our three data sets were combined vertically in a single data set. Data set cells were set to NA, in case a variable was not included in all data sets.

Note that our previous R syntax created a tibble instead of a data frame. In case you prefer to work with data frames, you could simply convert this tibble to a data frame as follows:

as.data.frame(data_all)                            # Convert tibble to data.frame

transform tibble to data frame in r

Table 2: Convert Tibble to Data Frame.

Looks good!

You may have noticed that we have simply stacked the rows of our three data frames on top of each other.

In the next example, I’ll explain how to merge our data frames based on a shared ID variable, so keep on reading!

Example 2: Import & Join CSV Files in R

As you can see in the previous tables, all of our example data frames contain an id column. In this example, we’ll use this id column to merge our data (instead of just row-binding it as in Example 1).

For this task, we first have to install and load the purrr package:

install.packages("purrr")                           # Install & load purrr package
library("purrr")

Next, we can apply the reduce and full_join functions to join our data frames based in the id variables:

data_join <- list.files(path = "C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/my_folder", # Identify all CSV files
                       pattern = "*.csv", full.names = TRUE) %>% 
  lapply(read_csv) %>%                              # Store all files in list
  reduce(full_join, by = "id")                      # Full-join data sets into one data set 
data_join                                           # Print data to RStudio console

tibble with full joined data files r

Table 3: Tibble Containing Three Data Sets Merged by ID Column.

As you can see based on Table 3, we have created another tibble containing our three data sets. However, in contrast to the previous example, we have joined our data sets based on the id column, and hence have avoided duplicated observations in our final data set.

Note that we have used a full join, to combine our data frames. In case you want to learn more about different types of joins, you may have a look here.

Video & Further Resources

Have a look at the following video that I have recently released on my Statistics Globe YouTube channel. I illustrate the contents of this article in more detail in the video.

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In addition, I can recommend reading the other articles on this homepage.

On this page I showed you how to combine all CSV files in a folder in the R programming language. Let me know in the comments section, in case you have further questions.

30 Comments. Leave new

Fernando Camargo
October 7, 2020 8:08 pm

Hi Joachim,

First of all, thank you for the content.

I have tried to use this content to sort out one task, but no success.

Scenario:

I have a few csv files in a folder, I want to merge all of them using an apply function.

Step 1 – I tried first listing all the files from a folder.

Step 2 – Save all csv files from the step 1 to the work directory using an apply function. ( failed )

Step 3 – Merge all the files.

This is an easy process in Power BI using power query, I am trying to reproduce it using R.

Reply
- Joachim
  October 8, 2020 5:52 am
  
  Hey Fernando,
  
  You are very welcome, thank you for the kind words!
  
  Have you tried the example code of this tutorial? What kind of error message did you get? I need some more details 🙂
  
  Regards,
  
  Joachim
  
  Reply
Lou
October 18, 2020 6:36 pm

This is amazing, thank you so very much!

Reply
- Joachim
  October 19, 2020 5:43 am
  
  Thanks Lou, I’m glad to hear this!
  
  Reply
Alex
January 16, 2021 4:20 am

Hello,

Thank you for this.
I tried your suggestion and what if I have one identical column for each file and I want all my files ordered by this identical column as with ‘by’ in merge (merge(data_1, data_2, by=c(“participant”, “X1”)))

Reply
- Joachim
  January 18, 2021 7:20 am
  
  Hi Alex,
  
  You are very welcome!
  
  Please have a look at the order function, specifically Example 5 of this tutorial: https://statisticsglobe.com/sort-order-rank-r-function-example
  
  Regards,
  
  Joachim
  
  Reply
Alex
January 27, 2021 6:16 pm

Hello Joachim,

Thank you for your answer but to merge 2 files with merge function, I can define a unique column as a reference for the merge (merge(data_1, data_2, by=c(“participant”, “X1”))). Here my 2 files will be merge according 2 specific and unique columns (with no duplication of my columns participant and X1). If I want to merge serveral csv with each a unique column that can give me the right association between all my file, is it possible ? I take a look on your example 5 (https://statisticsglobe.com/sort-order-rank-r-function-example) but it does not seem to answer my question. Until now, I am forced to use merge in an incremental way to merge all my csv because I specifically need the right association between my files with columns participant and X1.

Reply
- Joachim
  January 28, 2021 7:32 am
  Hey Alex,
  
  Thank you for the follow up.
  
  Does this (or something similar to this) work?
  all_files <- list.files() data_all <- read.csv(all_files[1]) for(i in 2:length(all_files)) { data_i <- read.csv(all_files[i]) data_all <- merge(data_all, data_i, by = c("participant", "X1")) }
  Regards,
  
  Joachim
  Reply
  - Alex
    January 28, 2021 2:41 pm
    
    Yes, It worked. Thank you very very much!
    
    Reply
    - Joachim
      January 28, 2021 3:37 pm
      
      Great to hear. You are very welcome Alex! 🙂
      
      Reply
Tommy
February 12, 2021 6:37 pm

Joachim,

The csv files in my directory have the following problem:
for data1, variable x1, the class is numeric.
for data2, variable x1, the class is character.

example
data1 <- data.frame(id = 1:6, # Create first example data frame
x1 = c(5, 1, 4, 9, 1, 2),
x2 = c("A", "Y", "G", "F", "G", "Y"))

data2 <- data.frame(id = 4:9, # Create second example data frame
x1 = c("none", "none", "none", "none", "none", "none"),
y1 = c(3, 3, 4, 1, 2, 9),
y2 = c("a", "x", "a", "x", "a", "x"))

I want the new, combined dataset to have variable x1 look like this:
x1 = c(5, 1, 4, 9, 1, 2, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA)
instead I get an error:
Error: Can't combine `x1` and `x1` .

Where/how in your series of pipe operators could I use the function as.numeric() on x1 variable – for all datasets in the list?
or na.strings = c(“none”)?

Thank you,
Tommy

Reply
- Joachim
  February 15, 2021 8:33 am
  
  Hi Tommy,
  
  In this case I would do this:
  
  1) Import the two data frames one-by-one
  2) Harmonize data frame classes using the as.numeric function
  3) Merge data frames
  
  I hope that helps!
  
  Joachim
  
  Reply
Alberto
August 7, 2021 4:35 pm

How do it if I want to use sep = “\t” in my dataframe?

Reply
- Joachim
  August 9, 2021 7:24 am
  
  Hey Alberto,
  
  I think you should be able to add additional arguments within the lapply function (i.e. lapply(read_csv, sep = “\t”).
  
  Does this work for you?
  
  Regards
  
  Joachim
  
  Reply
Amit Gupta
September 6, 2021 5:09 pm

Hey..it was no doubt an awesome explanation. But what about the case where I want to read CSV files one by one and run few set of instructions on each file seperately and write the output seperately…something like loop through all files one by one …. Regards

Reply
- Joachim
  September 7, 2021 6:14 am
  Hey Amit,
  
  Thank you for the kind feedback!
  
  Indeed, a for-loop might be a good solution for you. The code could look like this:
  my_files <- list.files() for(i in 1:length(my_files)) { data_i <- read.csv(my_files[i]) # Insert the data manipulation steps you want to apply write.csv(data_i, paste0("data_", i, ".csv")) }
  You can find more info on for-loops here: https://statisticsglobe.com/loops-in-r/
  
  Regards
  
  Joachim
  Reply

Alberto

October 24, 2021 4:19 am

Dear Joachim,
First of all, thank you for the content. I have learnt a lof from this amazing blog and your videos. I am a Stata user but I am trying to move to R gradually.
This discussion about “Import & Merge Multiple csv Files” is really great. I have this particular situation. I have about 20 data files, one per year (2000-2019), with lots of health infotmation. The problem comes when those data change the number of columns, and the class of many variables whith time (numeric to character or viceversa for the same variable). The expected result is to have only one data frame for the whole period.
I’ve read your suggestions to some questions in this post and think that my main problem is to harmonize the data frame classes. Is there a way to declare the class of the variables in a temporal data frame (whitout data), and then start reading and merging each CSV file using a for-loop?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!!!
Keep doing this amazing work!!!
I’m your FAN!!!!
Regards,

Alberto

Joachim

October 25, 2021 10:06 am

Hey Alberto,

Thank you very much for the very kind words! Glad to hear that you find my tutorials helpful!

Dealing with data classes when importing data from different sources and programming languages is always a mess. I have experienced this problem a lot myself (at my previous job were many STATA and SAS users).

Anyway, I have tried to replicate your situation and have written some code to import and rbind the data with proper classes:

data1 <- data.frame(x1 = c(5, 1, 4, 9, 1, 2),                     # Create first example data frame
                    x2 = c("A", "Y", "G", "F", "G", "Y"),
                    x3 = 111)
 
data2 <- data.frame(x1 = c(3, 3, 4, 1, 2, 9),                     # Create second example data frame
                    x2 = c("a", "x", "a", "x", "a", "x"))
 
data3 <- data.frame(x2 = c(3, 2),                                 # Create third example data frame
                    x3 = c("K", "b"))
 
write.csv(data1, "C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/my folder/data1.csv", row.names = FALSE) # Write first example data frame
write.csv(data2, "C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/my folder/data2.csv", row.names = FALSE) # Write second example data frame
write.csv(data3, "C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/my folder/data3.csv", row.names = FALSE) # Write third example data frame
 
file_names <- list.files("C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/my folder")      # Get names of files
file_names
# [1] "data1.csv" "data2.csv" "data3.csv"
 
data_all <- data.frame(x1 = character(),                          # Specify empty vectors in data.frame
                       x2 = character(),
                       x3 = character())
 
library("plyr")                                                   # Load plyr (i.e. rbind.fill function)
 
for(i in 1:length(file_names)) {                                  # Create data set with all data
 
  data_i <- read.csv(paste0("C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/my folder/", file_names[i]))
  data_all <- rbind.fill(data_all, data_i)
}
 
sapply(data_all, class)                                           # Check current classes of data set
#          x1          x2          x3 
# "character" "character" "character"
 
my_classes <- data.frame(variables = c("x1", "x2", "x3"),         # Create data that defines classes
                         classes = c("numeric", "character", "factor"))
my_classes
#   variables   classes
# 1        x1   numeric
# 2        x2 character
# 3        x3    factor
 
for(i in 1:ncol(data_all)) {                                      # Modify classes of data set
 
  if(my_classes$classes[my_classes$variables == colnames(data_all)[i]] == "numeric") {
 
    data_all[ , i] <- as.numeric(data_all[ , i])
  }
 
  if(my_classes$classes[my_classes$variables == colnames(data_all)[i]] == "character") {
 
    data_all[ , i] <- as.character(data_all[ , i])
  }
 
  if(my_classes$classes[my_classes$variables == colnames(data_all)[i]] == "factor") {
 
    data_all[ , i] <- as.factor(data_all[ , i])
  }
}
 
sapply(data_all, class)                                           # Check updated classes
#        x1          x2          x3 
# "numeric" "character"    "factor"
 
data_all                                                          # Print final data set
#    x1 x2   x3
# 1   5  A  111
# 2   1  Y  111
# 3   4  G  111
# 4   9  F  111
# 5   1  G  111
# 6   2  Y  111
# 7   3  a <NA>
# 8   3  x <NA>
# 9   4  a <NA>
# 10  1  x <NA>
# 11  2  a <NA>
# 12  9  x <NA>
# 13 NA  3    K
# 14 NA  2    b

I’m sure the efficiency of this code can be improved, but for the given example data it works fine.

I hope that helps! 🙂

Joachim

OMI
January 19, 2022 11:12 am

Hi ,
Thank for this useful blog, but i am facing some problems.
I have 200 csv files with each file having two columns, first is the plot ID which is same for all the 200 files, however the second column in each file consist of data with different variable name. I have run these codes but in results the data is merged in one column, however i need a data frame with data in columns for each variable.

Please help me in this regard.

Waiting for your reply.

Thank you

Reply
- Joachim
  January 19, 2022 1:07 pm
  
  Hey,
  
  Thank you for the kind words!
  
  Could you share the code you have used?
  
  Regards,
  Joachim
  
  Reply
Sarah
March 15, 2022 4:36 pm

Hi Joachim,
Your blog has helped so much with quickly getting up to pace in R! Thanks so much.
A quick questions though, I have roughly 20 csv files with the first column of each being an ID code (string). Is there a way to merge them in R so that the data for each ID code is kept assigned to that row?

Reply
- Joachim
  March 16, 2022 8:16 am
  
  Hey Sarah,
  
  Thank you so much for the kind words, glad you find my tutorials helpful!
  
  Also, thanks a lot for the question. I have noticed that this tutorial is a bit older/outdated, and therefore I have worked over it once again. You can now find a second example, which shows how to join the imported data sets based on their ID.
  
  I hope this helps!
  
  Joachim
  
  Reply
Joe
April 13, 2022 5:52 pm

Hello Joachim, my CSVs to be merged all have 12 header rows that can eventually be deleted, but first I have to create a new column for “SampleID”, then extract the SampleID from cell B2, and paste the SampleID value in all the rows from a given csv file, then the top 12 rows can be deleted. Would appreciate any suggestions.

Reply
- Joachim
  April 14, 2022 6:24 am
  Hey Joe,
  
  Are you searching for something like this?
  data <- data.frame(x1 = letters[1:5], x2 = 1:5, x3 = 5:1) data # x1 x2 x3 # 1 a 1 5 # 2 b 2 4 # 3 c 3 3 # 4 d 4 2 # 5 e 5 1 data$sampleID <- data[1, 1] data # x1 x2 x3 sampleID # 1 a 1 5 a # 2 b 2 4 a # 3 c 3 3 a # 4 d 4 2 a # 5 e 5 1 a
  Regards,
  Joachim
  Reply

Megan

May 6, 2022 4:01 pm

Hi there,
This little bit of code was super useful for me to combine a bunch of related csvs. Do you have a suggestion of where to add a bit of code to extract the file name and add it as a column to each file as they are imported? I need to be able to distinguish which data came from which file after I’ve combined them and they don’t have a unique identifier once the csvs are combined.

Joachim

May 9, 2022 6:09 am

Hey Megan,

Thanks for the kind comment, it’s great to hear that this tutorial is helpful!

Regarding your question, please have a look at the example code below. I’m sure there must be a more efficient solution for this, but the following code should do what you want:

files_all <- list.files(path = "C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/my_folder",
                        pattern = "*.csv")
 
data_all <- read_csv(paste0("C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/my_folder/", files_all[1]))
data_all <- cbind(file_name = files_all[1], data_all)
 
for(i in 2:length(files_all)) {
  data_i <- read_csv(paste0("C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/my_folder/", files_all[i]))
  data_i$file_name <- files_all[i]
  data_all <- bind_rows(data_all, data_i)
}
 
data_all
#    file_name id x1   x2 y1   y2 z1   z2
# 1  data1.csv  1  5    A NA <NA> NA <NA>
# 2  data1.csv  2  1    Y NA <NA> NA <NA>
# 3  data1.csv  3  4    G NA <NA> NA <NA>
# 4  data1.csv  4  9    F NA <NA> NA <NA>
# 5  data1.csv  5  1    G NA <NA> NA <NA>
# 6  data1.csv  6  2    Y NA <NA> NA <NA>
# 7  data2.csv  4 NA <NA>  3    a NA <NA>
# 8  data2.csv  5 NA <NA>  3    x NA <NA>
# 9  data2.csv  6 NA <NA>  4    a NA <NA>
# 10 data2.csv  7 NA <NA>  1    x NA <NA>
# 11 data2.csv  8 NA <NA>  2    a NA <NA>
# 12 data2.csv  9 NA <NA>  9    x NA <NA>
# 13 data3.csv  5 NA <NA> NA <NA>  3    K
# 14 data3.csv  6 NA <NA> NA <NA>  2    b

Regards,
Joachim

Megan
May 18, 2022 12:32 pm

Thank-you, this worked great for me 🙂

Reply
- Joachim
  May 18, 2022 2:45 pm
  
  This is great to hear, thanks for the kind comment Megan! 🙂
  
  Reply

Nikitha Anto
June 23, 2022 12:54 pm

Hi Joachim,

I have 12 .csv files in a folder. I’m trying to combine all these files into one dataframe. They all have similar coumns. I tried using lapply and rbind methods. But when i try to view contents of a column it shows null.
Could you please tell me a method to solve that?

Reply
- Joachim
  June 24, 2022 12:27 pm
  
  Hey Nikitha,
  
  In order to combine data frames using rbind, the data sets need to have the exactly same column names. Is this the case?
  
  If not, you may have a look at the rbind.fill function of the plyr package.
  
  Regards,
  Joachim
  
  Reply