I consulted and tried the setwd code and clicking on More --> Set as working directory options. However, the next time I closed and opened RStudio, it did NOT change my directory to the one I wanted.

How do I set the directory so I don't have change it each time I open RStudio?

Thanks.

4 Answers

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but under Tools | Global Options... (alt-TG) there is a way to set the default directory.

On R (3.1.2) for Windows (Win7) I did the following and it worked:

1- Navigate to the file "Rprofile.site" in the R-folder in my case: C:\Program Files\R\etc\Rprofile.site where "etc" is indeed the given name of the sub-folder.

2- Open the file Rprofile.site in a text-editor with administrator privileges (I did in Notepad) and insert right at the top of the file in the first line the following command which tells R to set the working directory at start-up to the PATH you are specifying within the brackets (be sure you use double backslashes "\\" for Windows!), in my case:

setwd("C:\\Users\\FWA\\Documents\\PROGR&MOOCS\\R_coursera")

3- Save the file which then looks like this:

setwd("C:\\Users\\FWA\\Documents\\PROGR&MOOCS\\R_coursera") # Things you might want to change # options(papersize="a4") # options(editor="notepad") # options(pager="internal") # set the default help type # options(help_type="text") options(help_type="html") # set a site library # .Library.site <- file.path(chartr("\\", "/", R.home()), "site-library") # set a CRAN mirror # local({r <- getOption("repos") # r["CRAN"] <- "" # options(repos=r)}) # Give a fortune cookie, but only to interactive sessions # (This would need the fortunes package to be installed.) # if (interactive()) # fortunes::fortune() 

4- Fire up the R-Studio and at the command prompt type the 'get working directory' command like this:

getwd()

5- Your R-Studio should now return the working directory path you previously have specified. In my case R returns this:

[1] "C:/Users/FWA/Documents/PROGR&MOOCS/R_coursera"

6- You're done.

Note: this changes the working directory for your R environment, not only for R-Studio.

Session -> Set Working Directory -> Choose Directory ... or shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+H)

Or you can set your working directory on console like that = setwd("C:/Users/burak/Desktop/R")

I faced the same problem. There are different way to changes you working directory in RStudio, some of them are, for example:

setwd("~/R/R Programming") #Note that ~ represents in a short way your document folder (or whatever folder you are using for) and what its before it.

Set our working directory without using squigless:

setwd("C:\Users\Usuario\Documents\R\R Programming")

Does the same thing using forward slashes:

setwd("C:/Users/Usuario/Documents/R/R Programming")

I got the information from the following link (though there are another options you can find in the video, recommended):