library(RDCOMClient) # Misebehaving. # Is Item a property or a function or both! e <- COMCreate("Excel.Application") books <- e[["Workbooks"]] books$Open(gsub("/", "\\\\", system.file("examples", "duncan.xls", package="RDCOMClient"))) sheets <- e[["Sheets"]] # Won't work k = sheets$Item("Sheet1") print(k) # Same as. .COM(sheets, "Item", "Sheet1", .dispatch = as.integer(3))