library(RDCOMClient) # Courtesy of David James. xls <- COMCreate("Excel.Application") books <- xls[["Workbooks"]] books$Open(gsub("/", "\\", system.file("examples", "duncan.xls", package = "RDCOMClient")) wks = books$item(1)[["worksheets"]]$item(1) r1 <- wks$Range("A1:C4") # okay r1$Value() ## create Cell COMIDispatch object: c1 <- wks$Cells(1,1) # okay c1$Value() c2 <- wks$Cells(3,4) # okay c2$Value() r2 <- wks$Range("A1", "C4") # okay r3 <- wks$Range(c1, c2)