[R] Readxl on Mac

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 01/12/2020 1:51 p.m., Dennis Weygand wrote:
>  From the following lines of code on an iMac running Catalina 10.15.7
> 
> 
> library(readxl)
> fname <-  "/Volumes/SD/LabData/Lorentz/Lorentz.xlsx"
> 
> Helm <- read_excel(fname,sheet="Helmholtz")
> 
> I get the following annoying error:
> Error: Evaluation error: zip file
> 
> To me this makes no sense: the file in question is not a zip file. The
> excel file in question, however, is either open on excel, or recently
> opened in excel.
> Does anyone know about this error, and what to do about it?
> I am running R version 3.5.1
> 
> Thanks for any assistance you can provide.

The .xlsx file format is actually a zip file containing a number of XML 
files.  I'd guess that Excel locks it when it's open, to stop two 
spreadsheets from opening it at once.

So the error message could be more informative, but it's probably 
accurately reporting the immediate problem.

Duncan Murdoch