question: protected HSSFRichTextString escapeColumnValue ( final Object rawValue ) { if ( rawValue == null ) { return null ; } String returnString = ObjectUtils . toString ( rawValue ) ; returnString = StringEscapeUtils . escapeJava ( StringUtils . trimToEmpty ( returnString ) ) ; returnString = StringUtils . replace ( StringUtils . trim ( returnString ) , "\\t" , "    " ) ; returnString = StringUtils . replace ( StringUtils . trim ( returnString ) , "\\r" , " " ) ; returnString = StringEscapeUtils . unescapeJava ( returnString ) ; returnString = removeHtmlTagsAndSpaces ( returnString ) ; return new HSSFRichTextString ( returnString ) ; }
target:  Escape certain values that are not permitted in excel cells.