CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rexceldownload
Tumbledown
Tumbledown

Reputation: 1917

R Download.File Issue with Excel Workbook

I'm trying to download an Excel workbook using R's download.file function.

When I download the file manually (using Internet Explorer or Chrome, right click & save as) then the file downloads and I can then open it in Excel without any problems.

When I use download.file in R, the file downloads and reports the correct file size. However when I then try to open the downloaded xls file in Excel 2010 I get the following error message:

Excel found unreadable content in 'test.xls'. Do you want to recover the contents of this workbook? If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes.

When I click Yes, nothing happens.

I've also tried accessing the file directly using the R package xlsx, this also fails.

Upvotes: 27

Views: 8436

Answers (1)

juba
juba

Reputation: 49033

You can try to download your file in binary mode (default for download.file is ASCII mode) with the mode argument. Something like :

download.file(myurl, mydestfile, mode="wb")

Upvotes: 54

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