In R I am trying to save an Excel workbook as a binary worksheet (.xlsb) instead of the standard (.xlsx or .xls) method. Using packages like openxlsx or xlsx do not work because they do not convert the file into binary format. I have been digging and found the package excel.link but it keeps crashing my R session and doesn't seem to work in a timely manner.
Does anyone know of a method to achieve this?
No, Excel Binary format is a proprietary encoding/compression format used by Microsoft that is not shared. You can only view and edit Binary files in excel. Is there any reason you cant save them as csvs or a regular excel file? If it is to large you can save it as a gzip file with
data.table::fwrite(file, "filename.gzip")
It is possible to convert an XLSX file to XLSB with the R package RDCOMClient
library(RDCOMClient)
path_XLSX_File <- "C:\\...\\xlsx_File.xlsx"
path_XLSB_File <- "C:\\...\\xlsb_File.xlsb"
xlApp <- COMCreate("Excel.Application")
xlApp[['Visible']] <- FALSE
xlWbk <- xlApp$Workbooks()$Open(path_XLSX_File)
xlWbk$SaveAs(path_XLSB_File, 50)
xlWbk$Close()
xlApp$Quit()
For all the format, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/developer/office-2010/ff198017(v=office.14). The "XLSB" format is "xlExcel12".
