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

Answer 1

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
  # 2                                                                    NA
  # 3                                                                    NA
  # 4                                                                    NA
  # 5  Baker Hughes Gulf of Mexico Oil / Gas Split                           NA
  # 6                                                                    NA
  # 7                                          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) 
}