I'm trying to save some data to an Excel file from Adobe AIR. I'm using the as3xls library hosted on Google Code, but it doesn't seem to SAVE formulas. For example, if I set the value of a cell to =SUM(B1:B38), it evaluates it as a string when I open the saved document. I was curious if any export here has any sort of knowledge on how to build in formulas into an Excel document. I'm not too saavy on the XLS or XLSX data format.
I am familiar with many other programming languages, so if someone knows of a really great library for doing this sort of thing, let me know!
I have been not try it, but Try it:
as3xls.swc
Related
I have used the "extract" command, but it never was able to find as much information as FOCA found on these excel spreadsheets I am dealing with.
For example, I am using the FOCA application to harvest and download files from the web. Afterwards, it is extracting metadata from all of the files.
With regards to excel files, it appears that these files are containing more metadata than the average pdf file. That being said, FOCA is able to detect printer names, email addresses, and a few other things that are stored within this spreadsheet file. However, I cannot find any way to get this same information in Linux using the "extract" command.
Anyone know a way to extract files within Linux and grab ALL of its metadata? Seems like the extract command may be limited from what I understand.
Thanks,
Excel files store a lot of meta data within the file, so you would have to parse the file itself to get at it. Since you're on Linux and can't use the Excel interop, you could try to use an Excel library like ExcelWriter or something similar. ExcelWriter is written for .Net, so you'd have to use mono.
I'm trying to parse a .xlsx file exported from a google docs. Right now I'm not trying to access it online, I'm manually downloading it and copying inside my application.
I've read the tutorial provided online, and this is the code I have right now:
var contentBA:ByteArray = new ByteArray ();
var fileToLoad:File = File.applicationDirectory.resolvePath("textLabels.xlsx");
var stream:FileStream = new FileStream();
stream.open(fileToLoad, FileMode.READ);
stream.readBytes (contentBA, 0, contentBA.length);
var xls:ExcelFile = new ExcelFile();
xls.loadFromByteArray(contentBA);
trace ("N SHEETS ", xls.sheets.length);
but the number of sheets it's always 0. I tried to change the file and to load the most simple excel ever but it keeps saying 0.
Is it a problem of the ".xlsx" extension? Am I missing something?
AS3XLS was written for the old file format BIFF Office 97 style documents. I've written an XLSX exporter for my work on the AdvancedDataGrid but it's proprietary work so I can't share the code unfortunately. However I can give you some direction. The BIFF format used special codes for encoding things like formatting for cells or formulas, the binary format was seemingly meant to reduce the file size (and perhaps as a form of obfuscation). XLSX instead takes the more open XML approach, creating a BIFF file was complicated and was reverse engineered by the Open Office team before Microsoft ever published the spec for it, the newer XML formats are pretty well documented. Every new office file that ends with the x in it's extension is an archive (just like a zip file, you can open it with any archive tool) with a bunch of XML files inside that define the sheet. I basically took a sample sheet with nothing in it (opened Excel saved a new workbook) then pieced it apart and wrote AS3 classes that corresponded to each of the XML files and each implemented an interface that said it had to have a method to getXMLString() then I wrote a wrapper that would create all the objects and used the container pattern/traversal to build all the XML files needed and used the nochump AS3 zip library to package it together.
A useful tool for inspecting the xlsx or docx or whateverx files can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5124
If you're on Mac discussion on one here:
http://openxmldeveloper.org/discussions/development_tools/f/27/p/1494/7453.aspx
Generally the site above was helpful
http://openxmldeveloper.org/
Documentation showing (minimal) examples
http://www.ecma-international.org/news/TC45_current_work/Office%20Open%20XML%20Part%203%20-%20Primer.pdf
NoChump's AS3 Zip library
http://nochump.com/blog/archives/15
Basically for more advanced features like tables or cell spanning I just attempted the change I wanted to be able to make programmatically in a simple Excel file then compared it against another without that new feature using the first tool linked above and implemented the change in the appropriate AS3 class (the one that corresponds to the XML file that changed).
It took about 2 weeks to get the organization of the classes solid but it's absolutely achievable.
ExcelFile is a class from a custom library and it says that supports Excel 2002-2003. What version of Excel do you use?
I'm looking to make an AddIn for excel that modifies formulas in cells. Looking at Microsoft's C# and VBA API, I don't even see a Formula object. All I can get is the string that is displayed. Is there a formula parser for excel so that I can mess with something like an AST graph? (I'm language agnostic)
Thanks.
There is not an accessible built-in parser with an API, but several people have written Excel formula parsers (although the Excel team keep moving the goalposts). See
Ewbi's c# and Rob Van Gelder's VBA
I would like to see some code/tutorials on reading an excel spreadsheet (a calender) into VB.NET. I'm pretty much okay from there. I want to convert it to an HTML table and output it into an html file for inclusion on a website.
Where can I find tutorials OR can someone post some code with a desciption to get me startd?
BONUS:
Is there a better way to include a xls file in a webpage?
There is an excel reader available on Codeproject here. The article covers the Excel file format layout, and the related material from Sun, in respect to how OpenOffice reads in the Excel spreadsheet.
AFAIK, there is no way to include an xls in a webpage unless you are talking about showing the actual data, it may be possible under IE only, to trigger the end user's Excel application, but IMHO that would be a dangerous assumption as that assumes the user has MS-Office installed.
Hope this helps,
Best regards,
Tom.
lately I've been into combining multiple OpenXML speadsheets via PHPExcel which
showed me that this framework has certain issues which makes it pretty much unusable
for what I want to do (my related SO question).
To make it short: it's hard to guarantee that all formatting features of Excel 2007 will
persist a file merge performed with that particular framework.
Anways, now I'm thinking of a more general approach. I want to open a template XLSX
which contains various formatting and add some plain alphanumeric data worksheets 'at the end' of the workbook.
Is sensefully possible to do the following:
unzip template XLSX
parse XML files
add worksheets
save xml files
rezip files to get valuid XLSX
Any hints or experiences would be highly appreciated.
thanks in advance
K
I haven't worked with .xlsx too much, but I've altered .docx files by manually adding and editing the XML.
The biggest concern with adding new parts to a document is to make sure you update the .rels files. The best way to figure out what needs to be updated is to create a new .xlsx document in Excel, add a worksheet, save the file and then unzip it to see what has changed. You can also use the DocumentReflector tool that comes with the OpenXML SDK if you want to see the internals of the file without having to unzip it.
I found the OpenXML reference manual very helpful when hand editing files because it tells you what elements you have to keep and what elements are optional to make a valid document. It makes it easier to work with when you can remove some of the extraneous elements that Excel adds automatically.