Save a workbook to file
Details
When saving a wbWorkbook to a file, memory usage may spike
depending on the worksheet size. This happens because the entire XML
structure is created in memory before writing to disk. The memory
required depends on worksheet size, as XML files consist of character
data and include additional overhead for validity checks.
The flush argument streams worksheet XML data directly to disk,
avoiding the need to build the full XML tree in memory. This reduces
memory usage but skips some XML validity checks. It also bypasses
the pugixml functions that openxlsx2 uses, omitting certain
preliminary sanity checks before writing. As the name suggests,
the output is simply flushed to disk.
By default, the utils::zip() function is used to create output files.
This requires a working zip utility to be available on the system. A valid
zip program must be found either via Sys.which("zip") or through the
R_ZIPCMD environment variable.
On Windows, a suitable zip tool is typically provided by Rtools. If
R_ZIPCMD is not set, openxlsx2 will automatically use the first detected
Rtools installation. If no zip utility is available, bsdtar can be used as
an alternative. On Windows this is shipped as tar.exe; on Mac and Linux
it is usually available as bsdtar (often requiring installation of the
archive package).
A further fallback—primarily for older Windows systems—is to point
R_ZIPCMD to 7z.exe. This approach has not been extensively tested and is
not reliable with 7-Zip on macOS.
As an additional fallback, the zip package can be used. It is no longer
listed in Imports and must be installed separately if needed.
See also
Other workbook wrappers:
base_font-wb,
col_widths-wb,
creators-wb,
grouping-wb,
row_heights-wb,
wb_add_chartsheet(),
wb_add_data(),
wb_add_data_table(),
wb_add_formula(),
wb_add_hyperlink(),
wb_add_pivot_table(),
wb_add_slicer(),
wb_add_worksheet(),
wb_base_colors,
wb_clone_worksheet(),
wb_copy_cells(),
wb_freeze_pane(),
wb_merge_cells(),
wb_set_last_modified_by(),
wb_workbook()
Examples
## Create a new workbook and add a worksheet
wb <- wb_workbook("Creator of workbook")
wb$add_worksheet(sheet = "My first worksheet")
## Save workbook to working directory
# \donttest{
wb_save(wb, file = temp_xlsx(), overwrite = TRUE)
## do not use utils::zip, will try to use bsdtar
# options("openxlsx2.no_utils_zip" = TRUE)
## if the above is set as well, do not use bsdtar
# options("openxlsx2.no_bsdtar" = TRUE)
## use 7zip on Windows this works, on Mac not
# Sys.setenv("R_ZIPCMD" = "C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe")
# if the last one is left blank the fallback is zip::zip
openxlsx2::write_xlsx(x = cars, temp_xlsx())
# }