Importing a password protected xlsx file into R - r

Question

I found an old thread (How do you read a password protected excel file into r?) that recommended that I use the following code to read in a password protected file:
install.packages("excel.link")
library("excel.link")
dat <- xl.read.file("TestWorkbook.xlsx", password = "pass", write.res.password="pass")
dat
However, when I try to do this my R immediately crashes. I've tried removing the write.res.password argument, and that doesn't seem to be the issue. I have a hunch that excel.link might not work with the newest version of R, so if you know of any other ways to do this I'd appreciate the advice.
EDIT: Using read.xlsx generates this error:
Error in .jcall("RJavaTools", "Ljava/lang/Object;", "newInstance", .jfindClass(class), :
org.apache.poi.poifs.filesystem.OfficeXmlFileException:
The supplied data appears to be in the Office 2007+ XML.
You are calling the part of POI that deals with OLE2 Office Documents.
You need to call a different part of POI to process this data (eg XSSF instead of HSSF)

Answer 1

You can remove the password of the excel file without knowing it with the following function (adapted version of code available at https://www.r-bloggers.com/2018/05/remove-password-protection-from-excel-sheets-using-r/)
remove_Password_Protection_From_Excel_File <- function(dir, file, bool_XLSXM = FALSE)
{
initial_Dir <- getwd()
setwd(dir)
# file name and path after removing protection
if(bool_XLSXM == TRUE)
{
file_unlocked <- stringr::str_replace(basename(file), ".xlsm$", "_unlocked.xlsm")
}else
{
file_unlocked <- stringr::str_replace(basename(file), ".xlsx$", "_unlocked.xlsx")
}
file_unlocked_path <- file.path(dir, file_unlocked)
# create temporary directory in project folder
# so we see what is going on
temp_dir <- "_tmp"
# remove and recreate _tmp folder in case it already exists
unlink(temp_dir, recursive = TRUE)
dir.create(temp_dir)
# unzip Excel file into temp folder
unzip(file, exdir = temp_dir)
# get full path to XML files for all worksheets
worksheet_paths <- list.files(paste0(temp_dir, "/xl/worksheets"), full.name = TRUE, pattern = ".xml")
# remove the XML node which contains the sheet protection
# We might of course use e.g. xml2 to parse the XML file, but this simple approach will suffice here
for(ws in worksheet_paths)
{
file_Content <- readLines(ws, encoding = "windows1")
# the "sheetProtection" node contains the hashed password "<sheetProtection SOME INFO />"
# we simply remove the whole node
out <- str_replace(file_Content, "<sheetProtection.*?/>", "")
writeLines(out, ws)
}
worksheet_Protection_Paths <- paste0(temp_dir, "/xl/workbook.xml")
file_Content <- readLines(worksheet_Protection_Paths , encoding = "windows1")
out <- stringr::str_replace(file_Content, "<workbookProtection.*?/>", "")
writeLines(out, worksheet_Protection_Paths)
# create a new zip, i.e. Excel file, containing the modified XML files
old_wd <- setwd(temp_dir)
files <- list.files(recursive = T, full.names = F, all.files = T, no.. = T)
# as the Excel file is a zip file, we can directly replace the .zip extension by .xlsx
zip::zip(file_unlocked_path, files = files) # utils::zip does not work for some reason
setwd(old_wd)
# clean up and remove temporary directory
unlink(temp_dir, recursive = T)
setwd(initial_Dir)
}
Once the password is removed, you can read the Excel file. This approach works for me.