xlsReadWrite Pro and embedding objects and files in Excel worksheets

Hans-Peter and other R developers,

How are you? Have you made any progess with embedding Url's in Excel?

Well, I have been busy thinking of more things for you to do;)

My colleagues in the lab are not R literate, and some are barely 
computer literate, so I give them everything in Excel workbooks. I have 
gradually evolved a system such that these workbooks have become 
compendia of my data, output, and methods. That, in fact, is why I 
bought the Pro version of xlsReadWritePro. I have been saving graphics 
as PDF files, then inserting them as object in Excel sheets.

What I would like to be able to do is to embed objects (files) in sheets 
of a workbook directly from within R. I would also like to be able to 
save my current R workspace as an object embedded in a sheet so that in 
the future, if packages change, I could go back and recreate the 
analysis. I do not need to be able to manuipulate files that R has not 
created, like a PDF file from another user. I would, however, like to be 
able to save my graphics as PDF files inside a worksheet, even if it 
meant creating a  temp file or something.

Before people begin talking about how MySQL or some other database could 
handle all that archiving, let me say that that is not what my 
colleagues want. They want a nice Excel file that they can take home on 
there laptops. One thing I like about worksheets is that they themselves 
can contain many embedded files, so it keeps our virtual desks neater 
and less confusing.

Hans, if you could do this, it would be of tremendous benefit to me and 
hopefully a lot of people. R developers tend to think that all 
scientists are running Linux on 64-bit computers, but most biomedical 
researches still store date in Excel files. This won't solve everybody's 
needs, but it could be a start.

Well, let me know what you think. I am cc'ing R-devel to see if any of 
those guys have ideas as well.

Thanks,
Mark

I don't know of any native xls read/write facility in R, either
in core or as add-ons (I could be wrong), but if you want some source 
code to scavenge on to build some R package out of it, there are two
perl modules, Spreadsheet::ParseExcel and Spreadsheet::WriteExcel
which are small enough to "read from front cover to back cover",
so to speak, might be useful for reference and steal code from.

The other open-source packages which can read/write excel files
are gnumeric and openoffice and probably too big to find one's way 
around the source code to steal there :-).

Good luck.

HTL

Mark W Kimpel wrote:

Hans-Peter and other R developers,

How are you? Have you made any progess with embedding Url's in Excel?

Well, I have been busy thinking of more things for you to do;)

My colleagues in the lab are not R literate, and some are barely 
computer literate, so I give them everything in Excel workbooks. I have 
gradually evolved a system such that these workbooks have become 
compendia of my data, output, and methods. That, in fact, is why I 
bought the Pro version of xlsReadWritePro. I have been saving graphics 
as PDF files, then inserting them as object in Excel sheets.

What I would like to be able to do is to embed objects (files) in sheets 
of a workbook directly from within R. I would also like to be able to 
save my current R workspace as an object embedded in a sheet so that in 
the future, if packages change, I could go back and recreate the 
analysis. I do not need to be able to manuipulate files that R has not 
created, like a PDF file from another user. I would, however, like to be 
able to save my graphics as PDF files inside a worksheet, even if it 
meant creating a  temp file or something.

Before people begin talking about how MySQL or some other database could 
handle all that archiving, let me say that that is not what my 
colleagues want. They want a nice Excel file that they can take home on 
there laptops. One thing I like about worksheets is that they themselves 
can contain many embedded files, so it keeps our virtual desks neater 
and less confusing.

Hans, if you could do this, it would be of tremendous benefit to me and 
hopefully a lot of people. R developers tend to think that all 
scientists are running Linux on 64-bit computers, but most biomedical 
researches still store date in Excel files. This won't solve everybody's 
needs, but it could be a start.

Well, let me know what you think. I am cc'ing R-devel to see if any of 
those guys have ideas as well.

Thanks,
Mark

Have you looked at RDCOMClient? I would imagine you could do what you 
want with this package.

http://www.omegahat.org/RDCOMClient/

Hin-Tak Leung wrote:

I don't know of any native xls read/write facility in R, either
in core or as add-ons (I could be wrong), but if you want some source 
code to scavenge on to build some R package out of it, there are two
perl modules, Spreadsheet::ParseExcel and Spreadsheet::WriteExcel
which are small enough to "read from front cover to back cover",
so to speak, might be useful for reference and steal code from.

The other open-source packages which can read/write excel files
are gnumeric and openoffice and probably too big to find one's way 
around the source code to steal there :-).

Good luck.

HTL

Mark W Kimpel wrote:

Hans-Peter and other R developers,

How are you? Have you made any progess with embedding Url's in Excel?

Well, I have been busy thinking of more things for you to do;)

My colleagues in the lab are not R literate, and some are barely 
computer literate, so I give them everything in Excel workbooks. I 
have gradually evolved a system such that these workbooks have become 
compendia of my data, output, and methods. That, in fact, is why I 
bought the Pro version of xlsReadWritePro. I have been saving 
graphics as PDF files, then inserting them as object in Excel sheets.

What I would like to be able to do is to embed objects (files) in 
sheets of a workbook directly from within R. I would also like to be 
able to save my current R workspace as an object embedded in a sheet 
so that in the future, if packages change, I could go back and 
recreate the analysis. I do not need to be able to manuipulate files 
that R has not created, like a PDF file from another user. I would, 
however, like to be able to save my graphics as PDF files inside a 
worksheet, even if it meant creating a  temp file or something.

Before people begin talking about how MySQL or some other database 
could handle all that archiving, let me say that that is not what my 
colleagues want. They want a nice Excel file that they can take home 
on there laptops. One thing I like about worksheets is that they 
themselves can contain many embedded files, so it keeps our virtual 
desks neater and less confusing.

Hans, if you could do this, it would be of tremendous benefit to me 
and hopefully a lot of people. R developers tend to think that all 
scientists are running Linux on 64-bit computers, but most biomedical 
researches still store date in Excel files. This won't solve 
everybody's needs, but it could be a start.

Well, let me know what you think. I am cc'ing R-devel to see if any 
of those guys have ideas as well.

Thanks,
Mark

James W. MacDonald wrote:

Have you looked at RDCOMClient? I would imagine you could do what you 
want with this package.

http://www.omegahat.org/RDCOMClient/

Interesting point. But the dcom client would be windows-specific?
(those I mentioned - the perl mondules, openoffice, run on windows,
as well as unix boxes - not sure about gnumeric :-).

In fact there is a very perverse way of doing it - ActiveState provides
a PerlCom product for hooking up dcom with activestate perl. i.e. you 
can go via R -> RDComClient -> PerlCom -> ActiveState Perl -> 
SpreadSheet::* . Just so that it does not require Excel installed
or an MS Office license...

In that sense, probably technology based on bridging over odbc
is also acceptable?

HTL

Hin-Tak Leung wrote:

I don't know of any native xls read/write facility in R, either
in core or as add-ons (I could be wrong), but if you want some source 
code to scavenge on to build some R package out of it, there are two
perl modules, Spreadsheet::ParseExcel and Spreadsheet::WriteExcel
which are small enough to "read from front cover to back cover",
so to speak, might be useful for reference and steal code from.

The other open-source packages which can read/write excel files
are gnumeric and openoffice and probably too big to find one's way 
around the source code to steal there :-).

Good luck.

HTL

Mark W Kimpel wrote:

Hans-Peter and other R developers,

How are you? Have you made any progess with embedding Url's in Excel?

Well, I have been busy thinking of more things for you to do;)

My colleagues in the lab are not R literate, and some are barely 
computer literate, so I give them everything in Excel workbooks. I 
have gradually evolved a system such that these workbooks have 
become compendia of my data, output, and methods. That, in fact, is 
why I bought the Pro version of xlsReadWritePro. I have been saving 
graphics as PDF files, then inserting them as object in Excel sheets.

What I would like to be able to do is to embed objects (files) in 
sheets of a workbook directly from within R. I would also like to be 
able to save my current R workspace as an object embedded in a sheet 
so that in the future, if packages change, I could go back and 
recreate the analysis. I do not need to be able to manuipulate files 
that R has not created, like a PDF file from another user. I would, 
however, like to be able to save my graphics as PDF files inside a 
worksheet, even if it meant creating a  temp file or something.

Before people begin talking about how MySQL or some other database 
could handle all that archiving, let me say that that is not what my 
colleagues want. They want a nice Excel file that they can take home 
on there laptops. One thing I like about worksheets is that they 
themselves can contain many embedded files, so it keeps our virtual 
desks neater and less confusing.

Hans, if you could do this, it would be of tremendous benefit to me 
and hopefully a lot of people. R developers tend to think that all 
scientists are running Linux on 64-bit computers, but most 
biomedical researches still store date in Excel files. This won't 
solve everybody's needs, but it could be a start.

Well, let me know what you think. I am cc'ing R-devel to see if any 
of those guys have ideas as well.

Thanks,
Mark

Hans-Peter and other R developers,

How are you? Have you made any progess with embedding Url's in Excel?

Well, I have been busy thinking of more things for you to do;)

My colleagues in the lab are not R literate, and some are barely
computer literate, so I give them everything in Excel workbooks. I have
gradually evolved a system such that these workbooks have become
compendia of my data, output, and methods. That, in fact, is why I
bought the Pro version of xlsReadWritePro. I have been saving graphics
as PDF files, then inserting them as object in Excel sheets.

What I would like to be able to do is to embed objects (files) in sheets
of a workbook directly from within R. I would also like to be able to
save my current R workspace as an object embedded in a sheet so that in
the future, if packages change, I could go back and recreate the
analysis. I do not need to be able to manuipulate files that R has not
created, like a PDF file from another user. I would, however, like to be
able to save my graphics as PDF files inside a worksheet, even if it
meant creating a  temp file or something.

Before people begin talking about how MySQL or some other database could
handle all that archiving, let me say that that is not what my
colleagues want. They want a nice Excel file that they can take home on
there laptops. One thing I like about worksheets is that they themselves
can contain many embedded files, so it keeps our virtual desks neater
and less confusing.

Hans, if you could do this, it would be of tremendous benefit to me and
hopefully a lot of people. R developers tend to think that all
scientists are running Linux on 64-bit computers, but most biomedical
researches still store date in Excel files. This won't solve everybody's
needs, but it could be a start.

Well, let me know what you think. I am cc'ing R-devel to see if any of
those guys have ideas as well.

Thanks,
Mark



--
Mark W. Kimpel MD
Neuroinformatics
Department of Psychiatry
Indiana University School of Medicine

Its not entirely clear to me what it is that you are looking
for.  Maybe you want to create an Excel spreadsheet with a hyperlink
to a web page?  This R code will do that.  It requires a Windows machine that
has Excel running on it.


library(RDCOMClient)
xl <- COMCreate("Excel.Application")
xl[["Visible"]] <- TRUE
wkbk <- xl$Workbooks()$Add()

sh <- xl$ActiveSheet()

B2R <- sh$Range("B3")
B2R[["Formula"]] <- '=HYPERLINK("http://www.r-project.org")'

wkbk$SaveAs("\\test-url.xls")
xl$Quit()




On 2/8/07, Mark W Kimpel <mwkimpel at gmail.com> wrote:

Hans-Peter and other R developers,

How are you? Have you made any progess with embedding Url's in Excel?

Well, I have been busy thinking of more things for you to do;)

My colleagues in the lab are not R literate, and some are barely
computer literate, so I give them everything in Excel workbooks. I have
gradually evolved a system such that these workbooks have become
compendia of my data, output, and methods. That, in fact, is why I
bought the Pro version of xlsReadWritePro. I have been saving graphics
as PDF files, then inserting them as object in Excel sheets.

What I would like to be able to do is to embed objects (files) in sheets
of a workbook directly from within R. I would also like to be able to
save my current R workspace as an object embedded in a sheet so that in
the future, if packages change, I could go back and recreate the
analysis. I do not need to be able to manuipulate files that R has not
created, like a PDF file from another user. I would, however, like to be
able to save my graphics as PDF files inside a worksheet, even if it
meant creating a  temp file or something.

Before people begin talking about how MySQL or some other database could
handle all that archiving, let me say that that is not what my
colleagues want. They want a nice Excel file that they can take home on
there laptops. One thing I like about worksheets is that they themselves
can contain many embedded files, so it keeps our virtual desks neater
and less confusing.

Hans, if you could do this, it would be of tremendous benefit to me and
hopefully a lot of people. R developers tend to think that all
scientists are running Linux on 64-bit computers, but most biomedical
researches still store date in Excel files. This won't solve everybody's
needs, but it could be a start.

Well, let me know what you think. I am cc'ing R-devel to see if any of
those guys have ideas as well.

Thanks,
Mark



--
Mark W. Kimpel MD
Neuroinformatics
Department of Psychiatry
Indiana University School of Medicine

I don't know of any native xls read/write facility in R, either
in core or as add-ons (I could be wrong), but if you want some source
code to scavenge on to build some R package out of it, there are two
perl modules, Spreadsheet::ParseExcel and Spreadsheet::WriteExcel
which are small enough to "read from front cover to back cover",
so to speak, might be useful for reference and steal code from.

The other open-source packages which can read/write excel files
are gnumeric and openoffice and probably too big to find one's way
around the source code to steal there :-).

Good luck.

HTL

Mark W Kimpel wrote:

Hans-Peter and other R developers,

How are you? Have you made any progess with embedding Url's in Excel?

Well, I have been busy thinking of more things for you to do;)

My colleagues in the lab are not R literate, and some are barely
computer literate, so I give them everything in Excel workbooks. I  
have
gradually evolved a system such that these workbooks have become
compendia of my data, output, and methods. That, in fact, is why I
bought the Pro version of xlsReadWritePro. I have been saving  
graphics
as PDF files, then inserting them as object in Excel sheets.

What I would like to be able to do is to embed objects (files) in  
sheets
of a workbook directly from within R. I would also like to be able to
save my current R workspace as an object embedded in a sheet so  
that in
the future, if packages change, I could go back and recreate the
analysis. I do not need to be able to manuipulate files that R has  
not
created, like a PDF file from another user. I would, however, like  
to be
able to save my graphics as PDF files inside a worksheet, even if it
meant creating a  temp file or something.

Before people begin talking about how MySQL or some other database  
could
handle all that archiving, let me say that that is not what my
colleagues want. They want a nice Excel file that they can take  
home on
there laptops. One thing I like about worksheets is that they  
themselves
can contain many embedded files, so it keeps our virtual desks neater
and less confusing.

Hans, if you could do this, it would be of tremendous benefit to  
me and
hopefully a lot of people. R developers tend to think that all
scientists are running Linux on 64-bit computers, but most biomedical
researches still store date in Excel files. This won't solve  
everybody's
needs, but it could be a start.

Well, let me know what you think. I am cc'ing R-devel to see if  
any of
those guys have ideas as well.

Thanks,
Mark

Hans-Peter and other R developers,

How are you? Have you made any progess with embedding Url's in Excel?

Well, I have been busy thinking of more things for you to do;)

My colleagues in the lab are not R literate, and some are barely 
computer literate, so I give them everything in Excel workbooks. I have 
gradually evolved a system such that these workbooks have become 
compendia of my data, output, and methods. That, in fact, is why I 
bought the Pro version of xlsReadWritePro. I have been saving graphics 
as PDF files, then inserting them as object in Excel sheets.

What I would like to be able to do is to embed objects (files) in sheets 
of a workbook directly from within R. I would also like to be able to 
save my current R workspace as an object embedded in a sheet so that in 
the future, if packages change, I could go back and recreate the 
analysis. I do not need to be able to manuipulate files that R has not 
created, like a PDF file from another user. I would, however, like to be 
able to save my graphics as PDF files inside a worksheet, even if it 
meant creating a  temp file or something.

Before people begin talking about how MySQL or some other database could 
handle all that archiving, let me say that that is not what my 
colleagues want. They want a nice Excel file that they can take home on 
there laptops. One thing I like about worksheets is that they themselves 
can contain many embedded files, so it keeps our virtual desks neater 
and less confusing.

Hans, if you could do this, it would be of tremendous benefit to me and 
hopefully a lot of people. R developers tend to think that all 
scientists are running Linux on 64-bit computers, but most biomedical 
researches still store date in Excel files. This won't solve everybody's 
needs, but it could be a start.

Well, let me know what you think. I am cc'ing R-devel to see if any of 
those guys have ideas as well.

Thanks,
Mark



-- 
Mark W. Kimpel MD
Neuroinformatics
Department of Psychiatry
Indiana University School of Medicine

I don't know of an R package that has a function to encode files as a
multipart mime, but the link above is a good start.

- Tom

Its not entirely clear to me what it is that you are looking
for.  Maybe you want to create an Excel spreadsheet with a hyperlink
to a web page?  This R code will do that.  It requires a Windows machine 
that
has Excel running on it.


library(RDCOMClient)
xl <- COMCreate("Excel.Application")
xl[["Visible"]] <- TRUE
wkbk <- xl$Workbooks()$Add()

sh <- xl$ActiveSheet()

B2R <- sh$Range("B3")
B2R[["Formula"]] <- '=HYPERLINK("http://www.r-project.org")'

wkbk$SaveAs("\\test-url.xls")
xl$Quit()




On 2/8/07, Mark W Kimpel <mwkimpel at gmail.com> wrote:

Hans-Peter and other R developers,

How are you? Have you made any progess with embedding Url's in Excel?

Well, I have been busy thinking of more things for you to do;)

My colleagues in the lab are not R literate, and some are barely
computer literate, so I give them everything in Excel workbooks. I have
gradually evolved a system such that these workbooks have become
compendia of my data, output, and methods. That, in fact, is why I
bought the Pro version of xlsReadWritePro. I have been saving graphics
as PDF files, then inserting them as object in Excel sheets.

What I would like to be able to do is to embed objects (files) in sheets
of a workbook directly from within R. I would also like to be able to
save my current R workspace as an object embedded in a sheet so that in
the future, if packages change, I could go back and recreate the
analysis. I do not need to be able to manuipulate files that R has not
created, like a PDF file from another user. I would, however, like to be
able to save my graphics as PDF files inside a worksheet, even if it
meant creating a  temp file or something.

Before people begin talking about how MySQL or some other database could
handle all that archiving, let me say that that is not what my
colleagues want. They want a nice Excel file that they can take home on
there laptops. One thing I like about worksheets is that they themselves
can contain many embedded files, so it keeps our virtual desks neater
and less confusing.

Hans, if you could do this, it would be of tremendous benefit to me and
hopefully a lot of people. R developers tend to think that all
scientists are running Linux on 64-bit computers, but most biomedical
researches still store date in Excel files. This won't solve everybody's
needs, but it could be a start.

Well, let me know what you think. I am cc'ing R-devel to see if any of
those guys have ideas as well.

Thanks,
Mark



-- 
Mark W. Kimpel MD
Neuroinformatics
Department of Psychiatry
Indiana University School of Medicine

Gabor,

What I want is a bit more than hyperlinks, although I did ask the
package developer about that to. My idea is, from within R, place things
like pdf files and .Rdata directly into an Excel spreadsheet. As a
practical matter, if I can create a report with some data that someone
else can manipulate as a "regular" spreadsheet (ex. sort gene lists) and
then have other sheets that contain pdf output files of graphs I do
within R. I would also like to archive my R workspace at time of
analysis so that I could, if I had to, the analysis again. As I and
others are constantly tweaking what functions do, it is sometimes
impossible for me to go back and figure out what versions of what
functions I was using. sessionInfo won't do what I want.

Since Hans-Peter came up with his really nice package, I thought I would
throw this out as an idea. I have been doing this manually for some time
 and my boss likes it because he only has to get one file from me, not
10. I include worksheets with the values of parameters passed to
functions, abbreviations, etc. Then 5 months from now and he wants me to
explain the sheet to him, everything is in one place.

In a way, I want to treat an Excel spreadsheet as a list (the workbook)
that can contain different kinds of objects (spreadsheets, pdfs, Rdata,
ex.). The Excel file acts as a binder for these different files. My boss
doesn't even want to deal with zipped files because when they are
unzipped he ends up with tons of files.

I know this might not make a lot of sense to UNIX users who mostly
interact with other programmers, but for those of us who deal with the
computer-barely-literate biologists who run Windows, it could be a nice
way of keeping things together.

BTW, I only mention Excel and Windows because that is what I use. I
think it would be great to come up with a common format that Linux, Mac,
and UNIX users could use. Could openOffice serve that purpose?

Thanks for your input.

Mark

Gabor Grothendieck wrote:

Its not entirely clear to me what it is that you are looking
for.  Maybe you want to create an Excel spreadsheet with a hyperlink
to a web page?  This R code will do that.  It requires a Windows machine
that
has Excel running on it.


library(RDCOMClient)
xl <- COMCreate("Excel.Application")
xl[["Visible"]] <- TRUE
wkbk <- xl$Workbooks()$Add()

sh <- xl$ActiveSheet()

B2R <- sh$Range("B3")
B2R[["Formula"]] <- '=HYPERLINK("http://www.r-project.org")'

wkbk$SaveAs("\\test-url.xls")
xl$Quit()




On 2/8/07, Mark W Kimpel <mwkimpel at gmail.com> wrote:

Hans-Peter and other R developers,

How are you? Have you made any progess with embedding Url's in Excel?

Well, I have been busy thinking of more things for you to do;)

My colleagues in the lab are not R literate, and some are barely
computer literate, so I give them everything in Excel workbooks. I have
gradually evolved a system such that these workbooks have become
compendia of my data, output, and methods. That, in fact, is why I
bought the Pro version of xlsReadWritePro. I have been saving graphics
as PDF files, then inserting them as object in Excel sheets.

What I would like to be able to do is to embed objects (files) in sheets
of a workbook directly from within R. I would also like to be able to
save my current R workspace as an object embedded in a sheet so that in
the future, if packages change, I could go back and recreate the
analysis. I do not need to be able to manuipulate files that R has not
created, like a PDF file from another user. I would, however, like to be
able to save my graphics as PDF files inside a worksheet, even if it
meant creating a  temp file or something.

Before people begin talking about how MySQL or some other database could
handle all that archiving, let me say that that is not what my
colleagues want. They want a nice Excel file that they can take home on
there laptops. One thing I like about worksheets is that they themselves
can contain many embedded files, so it keeps our virtual desks neater
and less confusing.

Hans, if you could do this, it would be of tremendous benefit to me and
hopefully a lot of people. R developers tend to think that all
scientists are running Linux on 64-bit computers, but most biomedical
researches still store date in Excel files. This won't solve everybody's
needs, but it could be a start.

Well, let me know what you think. I am cc'ing R-devel to see if any of
those guys have ideas as well.

Thanks,
Mark



--
Mark W. Kimpel MD
Neuroinformatics
Department of Psychiatry
Indiana University School of Medicine

--
Mark W. Kimpel MD
Neuroinformatics
Department of Psychiatry
Indiana University School of Medicine

Hans-Peter and other R developers,
How are you? Have you made any progess with embedding Url's in Excel?

I am cc'ing R-devel to see if any of
those guys have ideas as well.

Hi Mark,

Sorry to not reply earlier, I was away this week.

Hans-Peter and other R developers,
How are you? Have you made any progess with embedding Url's in Excel?

Yes, but I started with the update of the free version and got delayed
there (not that I didn't know that paying customers should be
prefered...) - I'll update the pro version right now and you should
have it until Wednesday, maybe tomorrow. Another person asked to write
formulas directly, it will be included also.

I am cc'ing R-devel to see if any of
those guys have ideas as well.

Good idea.

Regarding your post about your needs (report generation, container, ...):

I think the suggestion from Gabor with controlling Excel from within R
is an excellent way. xlsReadWritePro could be an option which has some
advantages and some disadvantages.

ActiveX/RDCOMClient:
- you can do everything that Excel supports
- this comes at a price: the interface from R is a bit technical. (the
suggestion with VBA and Macro recorder is a good one imho. Reading
about the Excel Object Model may also help)
- it's more free (what a statement for an excel-based dependency...)
- dependencies (installed Excel, RDCOMClient (probably a non-issue at
your situation))
- more Excelversions are supported

xlsReadWritePro:
- you can only do what is currently implemented
- the interface (should) let you program on a higher level and tries
to shield you from technical details. One of the goals was to give an
easy to use, well tested and well documented interface that feels
R-ish.
- no dependencies (Perl/DCOM/Excel/Java)
- it is native, i.e. works directly on the file.
- (at least potentially) it could be ported to Linux
- currently only Excel v97 - 2003. Excel 2007 is planned to follow
(~end of 07, no promises).

It depends on your situation. ActiveX was not an option for us as we
needed to work on the plain file. Otherwise we have pratically the
same requirements a you (just with other data).

I could potentially implement almost the whole Excel object model
functionality within xlsReadWritePro. But to be honest, it is costly
and I don't think many people would need that.

We basically implemented in the pro version what we needed ourself
internally. Upon request I try to add features if they fit well in the
existing interface and if I have time (or if it is payed for) but I
cannot give any promises.

Best regards,
Hans-Peter

I would like to be able to use a single Excel spreadsheet as an archive
for any output I generate in a single R session, including pdf files of
graphics and possibly the R history or even the R workspace itself.

sure that it can be done with VB. I am unsure, however, exactly how you
are generating the Excel files. For my own edification, are you using VB
or something similar?

Also, to make this not so Windows specific, would these files be
compatible with openOffice or some other open-source spreadsheet program
that would be compatible with the other OS's that R users employ? That
might make it more broadly appealing.

I would also be interested in feedback from other developers as to what
they think of my general idea. Is it worth pursuing? Would it be worthy
of a simple package?

Yes, but I started with the update of the free version and got delayed
there (not that I didn't know that paying customers should be
prefered...) - I'll update the pro version right now and you should
have it until Wednesday, maybe tomorrow. Another person asked to write
formulas directly, it will be included also.