R Error in setwd() : cannot change working directory (2 Examples)

In this article you’ll learn how to deal with the “Error in setwd() : cannot change working directory” in the R programming language.

Table of contents:

Let’s take a look at some R codes in action:

Example 1: Reproduce the Error in setwd() : cannot change working directory

In this section, I’ll explain how to replicate the error message “cannot change working directory” in R.

Let’s assume that we want to set our working directory to a folder called “Some Folder” on our Desktop using the setwd function.

Then, we might try to do that as shown below:

setwd("C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/Some Folder")    # Try to use non-existing folder
# Error in setwd("C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/Some Folder") : 
#   cannot change working directory

Unfortunately, the RStudio console returns the error message “cannot change working directory”.

The reason for this is that the directory we are trying to access does not exist. We might have specified the folder name wrong, or the path before the folder name is not existing.

Example 2: Fix the Error in setwd() : cannot change working directory

We can solve this problem by specifying the path correctly. In this example, the problem was that the folder “Some Folder” does not exist on my Desktop. For that reason, I can avoid the “Error in setwd() : cannot change working directory” by setting the working directory directly to my Desktop:

setwd("C:/Users/Joach/Desktop/")               # Properly specify setwd

Executing the previous R code does not lead to any errors.

Video, Further Resources & Summary

Do you need more information on the R code of this post? Then you may want to watch the following video tutorial of my YouTube channel. In the video, I illustrate the R code of this tutorial:

The YouTube video will be added soon.

In addition, you may read some of the other articles of this homepage.

• Handling Error & Warning Messages in R
• R Programming Examples

You have learned in this tutorial how to avoid the “Error in setwd() : cannot change working directory” in the R programming language. In case you have any additional questions, let me know in the comments.