[R] read.xlsx function crashing R Studio

[Kevin Kowitski]

Hey everyone, 

   I have used read.xlsx in the past rather than XLConnect for importing Excel data to R.  However, I have been finding now that the read.xlsx function has been causing my R studio to Time out.  I thought it might be because the R studio I had was out of date so I installed R studio X64 3.3.1 and reinstalled the xlsx package but it is still failing.  I have been trying to use XLConnect in it's place which has been working, excpet that I am running into memory error:
              Error: OutOfMemoryError (Java): GC overhead limit exceeded
      
I did some online searching and found an option to increase memory:
              "options(java.parameters = "-Xmx4g" )

but it resulted in this new memory Error:

             Error: OutOfMemoryError (Java): Java heap space

Can anyone provide me with some help on getting the read.xlsx function working?

-Kevin