How to open an .xlsb file in R?

Question

I'm trying to open an .xlsb file in R and keep getting similar errors.

Any recommendations on how to solve this issue without having to download the data and save it in a different formate?

read.xlsx(paste(OutputLocation,FileName, sep=""), sheetName = "Master Data")

Error messages: Error in .jcall("RJavaTools", "Ljava/lang/Object;", "invokeMethod", cl, : org.apache.poi.xssf.XLSBUnsupportedException: .XLSB Binary Workbooks are not supported

rigDataWB<-loadWorkbook(paste(OutputLocation,FileName, sep=""))

Error messages: Error: XLSBUnsupportedException (Java): .XLSB Binary Workbooks are not supported

Please note:

I cannot install Perl libraries.

I'm running 64bit R.

Reference: http://www.milanor.net/blog/?p=779

My data is from: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=79687&p=irol-reportsother

Answer 1

Use the RODBC package:

library(RODBC)
wb <- "D:\\Data\\Masked Data.xlsb" # Give the file name
con2 <- odbcConnectExcel2007(wb)
data <- sqlFetch(con2, "Sheet1$") # Provide name of sheet
nrow(data)

Answer 2

One way could be to use ODBC:

require(RODBC)
if (any(grepl("*.xlsb", odbcDataSources(), fixed = TRUE))) {
  download.file(url = "http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NTcwMjI1fENoaWxkSUQ9MjcxMjIxfFR5cGU9MQ==&t=1", 
                destfile = file.path(tempdir(), "test.xlsb"), 
                mode = "wb")
  conn <- odbcConnectExcel2007( file.path(tempdir(), "test.xlsb")) 
  df <- sqlFetch(conn, sub("'(.*)\\$'", "\\1", sqlTables(conn)$TABLE_NAME)[4]) # read 4th sheet in the table name list
  head(df, 10)
  #                                             F1          F2         F3       F4        F5 F6
  # 1                                         <NA>        <NA>       <NA>     <NA>      <NA> NA
  # 2                                         <NA>        <NA>       <NA>     <NA>      <NA> NA
  # 3                                         <NA>        <NA>       <NA>     <NA>      <NA> NA
  # 4                                         <NA>        <NA>       <NA>     <NA>      <NA> NA
  # 5  Baker Hughes Gulf of Mexico Oil / Gas Split        <NA>       <NA>     <NA>      <NA> NA
  # 6                                         <NA>        <NA>       <NA>     <NA>      <NA> NA
  # 7                                         <NA> US Offshore Total\nGoM Gas\nGoM Oil \nGoM NA
  # 8                                       1/7/00         127        123      116         7 NA
  # 9                                      1/14/00         125        121      116         5 NA
  # 10                                     1/21/00         125        121      116         5 NA
  close(conn) 
}