Use Excel with PythonInR

library(PythonInR)

## 
## Initialize Python Version 2.7.9 (default, Mar  1 2015, 13:01:26) 
## [GCC 4.9.2]

pyExec("import openpyxl")
pyExecp("openpyxl.__version__")

## u'2.3.3'

pyImport(import="Workbook", from="openpyxl")

wb <- Workbook()
ws <- wb$active
## ws <- wb$get_active_sheet() ## for older version!
ws$title <- "cars"
## write append the first 10 rows to the workbook
ws$append(colnames(cars))

## NULL

for (i in seq(1, 10)) {
    ws$append(as.matrix(cars[i,]))
}
ws$append(c('=SUM(A3:A10)', '=SUM(A3:A10)'))

## NULL

wb$save(th.string("cars.xlsx"))

## NULL

pyImport(import="load_workbook", from="openpyxl")
wb <- load_workbook("cars.xlsx")
wb$get_sheet_names()

## [1] "cars"

ws <- wb$get_sheet_by_name("cars")
pyExec("
def get_range(ws, first_row, first_col, last_row, last_col):
    x = []
    for m in range(first_row, last_row):
        row = []
        for n in range(first_col, last_col):
            row.append(ws.cell(row = m, column = n).value)
        x.append(row)
    return x
")
do.call(rbind, pyCall("get_range", list(ws, 1L, 1L, 10L, 3L), simplify=FALSE))

##       [,1]    [,2]  
##  [1,] "speed" "dist"
##  [2,] 4       2     
##  [3,] 4       10    
##  [4,] 7       4     
##  [5,] 7       22    
##  [6,] 8       16    
##  [7,] 9       10    
##  [8,] 10      18    
##  [9,] 10      26