Readin .xlsx file into R - r

Question

Im trying to read an excel file into R. It's about the following file in my cwd:
> list.files()
[1] "Keuren_Op_Afspraak.xlsx"
I installed XLConnect and am doing the following:
library(XLConnect)
demoExcelFile <- system.file("Keuren_Op_Afspraak.xlsx", package = "XLConnect")
wb <- loadWorkbook(demoExcelFile)
But this gives me the error:
Error: FileNotFoundException (Java): File '' could not be found - you may specify to automatically create the file if not existing.
But I dont understand where this is coming from. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

I prefer using the readxl package. It is written in C so it is faster. It also seems to handle large files better. The command would be:
library(readxl)
wb <- read_excel("Keuren_Op_Afspraak.xlsx")

Answer 2

You can also use the xlsx package.
library(xlsx)
wb <- read.xlsx("Keuren_Op_Afspraak.xlsx", sheet = 1)
Edit :#Verena
You can also use this function much faster:
wb <- read.xlsx2("Keuren_Op_Afspraak.xlsx", sheet = 1)

Answer 3

You have to change your code that way:
library(XLConnect)
demoExcelFile <- "Keuren_Op_Afspraak.xlsx"
wb <- loadWorkbook(demoExcelFile)
You probably took the example from here:
http://www.inside-r.org/packages/cran/XLConnect/docs/loadWorkbook
This line
system.file("demoFiles/mtcars.xlsx", package = "XLConnect")
is a way to get sample files that are part of a package. If you download the zip File of XLConnect and look into the folder structure you will see that there is a folder demoFiles that contains mtcars.xlsx. And the parameter package="XLConnect" tells the method to look for the file in this package.
If you type it into the command line it returns the absolute path to the file:
"C:/Users/Expecto/Documents/R/win-library/3.1/XLConnect/demoFiles/mtcars.xlsx"
To use loadWorkbook you simply need to pass the relative or absolute filepath.