[R] Importing an Excel spreadsheet

[andy]

Hello

I am trying to import an *.xls spreadsheet into R. I am doing this as 
follows:

 > read.table(file("A5_DL.xls"))

But obtain the error:

Error in type.convert(data[[i]], as.is = as.is[i], dec = dec, na.strings 
= character(0)) :
invalid multibyte string at '?????'

So I copied it all over to a text document and tried to import that, thus:
 > read.table("A5.txt")

The error I got then was:

Error in scan(file, what, nmax, sep, dec, quote, skip, nlines, 
na.strings, :
line 26 did not have 34 elements

Having gone over the line in question, it all seems to be the same as 
any other row. I really don't want to have to manually re-enter the data 
(some 98 rows x 26 columns).

Can someone advise me on what I am overlooking here please.

Thanks

Andy

-- 

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"