This error (or a variant of it) is quite common when using R:

Error in loadNamespace(name) : there is no package called 'here'

Another variant is:

Error in library(here) : there is no package called 'here'

Let’s list out some ways that you can address this issue.

Install the package

Install the package that is claimed not to be there. That is, for this error:

Error in loadNamespace(name) : there is no package called 'PKG'

You install the PKG package (use your package name intead of PKG):

install.packages("PKG")

Why does that work?

The error:

... there is no package called 'PKG'

is given because R is looking for a package to use, and it cannot find that package. Installing your package means that R can find it, and load it so you can use it!

Another Error: Error in install.packages : object ‘here’ not found

This happens when you write:

install.packages(here)

You need to write the package that you want to install in quotes:

install.packages("here")

Why? Well R thinks here is an object, but it requires the R package to be in quotes.

Now, that might not feel like the best reason - the truth is it is to do with a thing called Non Standard Evaluation (NSE), but going into more detail than that is beyond the scope of this blog post.

What I would suggest is this, internalise:

When installing R packages, put the package in quotes: “package”

Another error: Warning in install.packages : package ‘emo’ is not available (for R version 3.6.2)

This can happen if you write:

install.packages("broomstick")

Why? Well, it could be one of the following below errors:

1. Package name misspelt
2. Package might not exist on CRAN

It is quite likely that it is not to do with your version of R.

Problem solving: Is the package perhaps misspelt?

I have, more often than I care to admit, had a spelling mistake that caused me to go on a rabbit hole.

Problem solving: Does the package exist on CRAN?

Type “PKG CRAN rstats” into a search engine

Perhaps you might find the right spelling, in which case, install the package with the right spelling using install.packages.

Perhaps you might find that it is on github (or bitbucket or gitlab), not on CRAN.

Let’s take a github example. You need to install an R package from github with a different command.

Let’s say we want to install the “treezy” package from github. You scroll down and find the instructions here:

So you will need to do two things:

1. Install remotes from CRAN (install.packages("remotes")
2. Run remotes::install_github()

Similarly there are packages for R packages that you might find on other repositories such as gitlab (install_gitlab) or bitbucket (install_bitbucket).

Why write this blog post?

I teach an introduction to data analysis class, and many students encounter this error:

Error in loadNamespace(name) : there is no package called 'PKG'

but they do not have the skills and experience to identify how to solve this problem. In class, I decided to showcase how I would try to solve this problem, live, on zoom, to my class. So I googled the error, and then I discovered that the top hit isthis stack overflow page, which was decidedly not helpful for the problem that my students had.

So I wrote this blogpost.

Hopefully it’s helpful!

Next up in this series is tackling this problem:

Error: package or namespace load failed for 'tidyverse' in loadNamespace(j <-
i[[1L]], c(lib.loc, .libPaths()), versionCheck = vI[[j]]): namespace 'tibble' 
2.1.3 is already loaded, but >= 3.0.0 is required

Thanks

Thanks to Emi Tanaka and Miles McBain for their suggestions on a few helpful additions to the blog post!