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Re^3: Not sure why perl-generated spreadsheet has formatting issues

by Athanasius (Prior)
on Sep 18, 2012 at 09:06 UTC ( #994243=note: print w/ replies, xml ) Need Help??

in reply to Re^2: Not sure why perl-generated spreadsheet has formatting issues
in thread Not sure why perl-generated spreadsheet has formatting issues

Hello poopay,

I can think of only two ways to write formatted dates into an Excel spreadsheet using Excel::Writer::XLSX:

  1. The ‘correct’ way is to convert the date string into Excel’s internal date format, namely a floating-point number. For example:

    use Excel::Writer::XLSX::Utility; ... my $ndate = xl_parse_date($date); $worksheet->write_date_time($row, $col, $ndate, $format);

    (Note that Excel::Writer::XLSX::Utility is installed along with Excel::Writer::XLSX, but its use may require the further installation of Date::Manip.)

    Unfortunately, application of the appropriate $format here leads to the problem you describe: the formatting is present, but is not applied to the date until the user double-clicks the cell and presses Enter. I don’t know why this is, and I haven’t found any way to make the formatting appear directly. Possibly a bug in Excel::Writer::XLSX?

  2. Bypass Excel’s formatting by entering the date as a string. This is the method I suggested in my previous post. You say, “I’ve tried the code but the output is still the same.” Well, I don’t see how that’s possible, since a date written as a string is just a string, as far as Excel is concerned. The code I gave is a kludge, but it works correctly for me, as I showed.

Is it possible for me to send you the output file I was able to generate?

No, but I don’t see how that would help anyway. It would be much more useful for you to show the code you used, and just describe the resulting output.

...if I generate a pivot table...

According to the documentation, Excel::Writer::XLSX does not (yet) support the generation of pivot tables — this is mentioned in the TO DO section. So, how are you generating pivot tables?

Perhaps the best advice I can give is that you investigate alternative CPAN modules for writing Excel. :-(

Athanasius <°(((><contra mundum

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