Impossibility of loading a “Excel 5.0/7.0 (BIFF5) format” file in R
问题 There's a multitude of ways to load Excel files in R, as reported here: http://www.milanor.net/blog/?p=779 However, I've tried most of the options out there (RODBC, xlsx, gdata, XLConnect) and just cannot make R load this particular file, published by the British government in 2013: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/npp/national-population-projections/2012-based-projections/rft-table-a3-4-principal-projection---england-population-single-year-of-age.xls Here's an example of my failed attempts: #