Installing packages in R path[1]="\file/users/bernard/R/win-library/2.15": Access is denied

Question

I recently attended an R training course and was happily working with a laptop in RStudio. On my return to the office I installed RStudio and I tried to run some scripts I had gathered from the course. However, these scripts required me to install packages and when I tried to install the packages the result was an error.

Error in install.packages : path[1]="\file/users/bernard/R/win-library/2.15": Access is denied

In my firm we write to a server drive refferred to as the U: drive rather than the hard disk on the desktop for security reasons. Any ideas what is going on?

I have checked the properties of the folder in windows and it says I have permission but still it fails. I have tried creating a folder on the C drive and directing R_LIBS_USER to it but no luck.

Answer 1

Your best hope would probably be to change your library location:

.libPaths("U:/somefolder/library")

This way all of your packages will be installed to the network drive.