R xlsx package error

Question

Error in .jcall("RJavaTools", "Ljava/lang/Object;", "invokeMethod", cl,  : 
  java.util.zip.ZipException: invalid code -- missing end-of-block

Does anyone have this error when you try to use

dat <- read.xlsx("data.xlsx", sheetIndex=1, colIndex=colIndex, rowIndex=rowIndex)?

Answer 1

I had this problem with a file downloaded from the internet using R command line, for an online course. Found that apparently the download mode needs to be set properly as write-binary (wb) since xlsx is basically a binary file (zip). Who knew?

If that's what you did too, re-download the file with the mode set properly; like:

download.file(fileUrl, destfile='./data/sample.xlsx', mode='wb')

Answer 2

The version of java you have installed is likely incompatible with the xslx package. Try replacing your default java with the 64 bit version: https://www.java.com/en/download/faq/java_win64bit.xml .