read_xlsx seeing entire sheet as dates

When I run this set of commands on several sheets in a single workbook:
col_num <- length(readxl::read_xlsx(excel_file, sheet, n_max = 1))
col_num <- col_num - 4
column_types <- c('text', 'text', 'text', 'text', rep('numeric', col_num))
readxl::read_xlsx(excel_file, sheet, col_types = column_types)

Most of the sheets import correctly. A few of them, however, produce a warning for every number found in the sheet:
1: In read_fun(path = enc2native(normalizePath(path)), sheet_i = sheet, ... :
Expecting numeric in E2 / R2C5: got a date

I've checked the sheets, and all their numbers are formatted as numbers. Also, it looks like read_xlsx imported them correctly in that the totals for each category equal the totals at the bottom of the sheet. Are these hundreds of warnings something I can safely ignore, or is it possible that R will treat some of these numbers as dates?

This topic was automatically closed 21 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.