library(RDCOMClient) e <- COMCreate("Excel.Application") books <- e[["workbooks"]] fileName = system.file("examples", "duncan.xls", package = "RDCOMClient") print(fileName) books$open(gsub("/", "\\\\", fileName), Editable=FALSE, ReadOnly = TRUE) cat("Finished open\n") e[["Visible"]] <- TRUE #XXX The foo.txt appears with "" around it in the dialog box. e$GetSaveAsFileName(InitialFilename = "foo.txt", Title="Select a name for this file")