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Using POI to both detect and set column width and to apply text wrap based on that width

Java 8 and Apache POI 4.1.x here. I need to:
Read in a template Excel file, that just has a single row of pre-styled header columns
Write a List<Fizz> (POJO list) to a new Excel file that uses that template
I do this because the template Excel has lots of complicated stylings, and so just using an existing one as a template input was much easier than me trying to manually generate the stylings myself via POI and CellUtil.
I have this working perfectly fine like so:
List<Fizz> fizzes = getSomehow();
InputStream inp = this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResource("my-template.xlsx").openStream();
Workbook workbook = WorkbookFactory.create(inp);
Sheet sheet = workbook.getSheetAt(0);
// the header is at row = 0 (0-based rows)
// so start writing the list on the row=1 (1st data/non-header row)
int rowNum = 1;
for (Fizz fizz : fizzes) {
Row nextRow = sheet.createRow(rowNum);
Cell itemNumber = nextRow.createCell(0);
itemNumber.setCellValue(fizz.getItemNumber());
Cell description = nextRow.createCell(1);
description.setCellValue(fizz.getDescription());
rowNum++;
}
// resize the columns appropriately
for (int c = 0; c < 2; c++) {
sheet.autoSizeColumn(c);
}
// export to file system
FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("some-output.xlsx");
workbook.write(fos);
fos.close();
inp.close();
workbook.close();
Everything works great, with one exception: often the Fizz#description is pretty lengthy, and is sometimes hundreds of characters long. Because there is no use of text wrapping in my code, and because I use autoSizeColumn for all columns, POI is setting the Description column width to the length of the longest-description.
Instead, I now want to stop using autoSizeColumn (I think!) and instead:
Force the output file's (in our case, "some-output.xlsx") Description column width to be the same as the input template file's Description's column. So if the Description column on my-template.xlsx is, say, 54, then I want some-output.xlsx's Description column to also be 54.
If the current row's Fizz description is too long for that width, I want to apply text wrapping so that the column stays fixed (again, in this case, 54) but that the description fits inside of it.
I would like to do this for every column, and ideally, I would like the code to detect what the width is for each column on the template. I say that because I would like to be able to open the template in Excel, change its width manually, save it, then re-run my code and have it pick up on that width change.
Any ideas on what I can do to accomplish this?

First approach
Set wrap text cell style for whole description column (column B) in your template using Excel's GUI. Then do using following getPreferredCellStyle method to get that column cell style and set it as the preferred cell style for each cell in description column (column B).
CellStyle getPreferredCellStyle(Cell cell) {
// a method to get the preferred cell style for a cell
// this is either the already applied cell style
// or if that not present, then the row style (default cell style for this row)
// or if that not present, then the column style (default cell style for this column)
CellStyle cellStyle = cell.getCellStyle();
// if no explicit cell style applied then cellStyle.getIndex() is 0 for XSSF
// or 15 (0xF = the index to the default ExtendedFormatRecord (0xF)) for HSSF
if ((cell instanceof XSSFCell && cellStyle.getIndex() == 0) || (cell instanceof HSSFCell && cellStyle.getIndex() == 15)) cellStyle = cell.getRow().getRowStyle();
if (cellStyle == null) cellStyle = cell.getSheet().getColumnStyle(cell.getColumnIndex());
if (cellStyle == null) cellStyle = cell.getCellStyle();
return cellStyle;
}
Then
...
Cell description = nextRow.createCell(1);
description.setCellValue(fizz.getDescription());
description.setCellStyle(getPreferredCellStyle(description));
...
Second approach
Do using CellUtil to set wrap text cell style for each cell in description column.
...
Cell description = nextRow.createCell(1);
description.setCellValue(fizz.getDescription());
CellUtil.setCellStyleProperty(description, CellUtil.WRAP_TEXT, true);
...
For both approaches
Do not set autoSizeColumn for the description column (column B). In your example, only autosize column 0 (A) but not column 1 (B):
...
sheet.autoSizeColumn(0);
...
So the column width of column B remains unchanged as width as it is in the template.

How to change font color of an existing table cell in Aspose Word in Java?

I have an existing table in Aspose word template, I want to change the font color of the text inside the cell. How can I achieve it?
CellCollection cellList = row.getCells()
def i = 0
Run run;
Cell cell = cellList.get(i)
I am new to Aspose Word.

Please use following code example to change the color of text inside table's cell. Hope this helps you.
//Load the document
Document doc = new Document(MyDir + "in.docx");
//Get the first table in the document
Table table = (Table)doc.getChild(NodeType.TABLE, 0, true);
//Get the first cell of first row
Cell cell = (Cell)table.getRows().get(0).getCells().get(0);
//Change the color of text
for (Run run : (Iterable<Run>)cell.getChildNodes(NodeType.RUN, true))
{
run.getFont().setColor(Color.BLUE);
}
//Save the document
doc.save(MyDir + "Out.docx");
I work with Aspose as Developer evangelist.

How to set a cell format to Text

I am using Apache-POI 3.14. I have a need to lock-down a cell to a "Text" format. The data in my cell might be all digits, but it is still considered a string. When I write the cell, I do it like this:
cell.setCellValue("001");
cell.setCellType(Cell.CELL_TYPE_STRING);
When I open the output workbook in Excel, the cell contains the correct value ("001") and it displays with a small green triangle in the corner. Hovering over the exclamation point displays the hover text The number in this cell is formatted as text or preceded by an apostrophe. When I look at the cell formatting (Right-click -> Format cells), the "Category" is displayed as "General". I expected this to be "Text".
The problem arises when a user modifies the value in the cell by entering only digits. Because the "Category" is "General", the value is entered and displayed as a number, removing leading zeroes and right-justified.
How can I achieve the same result as Excel's "Format cells" dialog?

You can try to set the cell-format to text via
DataFormat fmt = wb.createDataFormat();
CellStyle cellStyle = wb.createCellStyle();
cellStyle.setDataFormat(
fmt.getFormat("#"));
cell.setCellStyle(cellStyle);
Note: CellStyles shoudl be re-used for all applicable cells, do not create new ones for every cell.
You could also try to use the "Ignore errors" feature in the .xlsx format, however support for it is not fully done yet, see Issue 46136 and Issue 58641 for some ongoing discussion.
See also this MSDN page for some additional information

For HSSF,
DataFormat fmt = workbook.createDataFormat();
CellStyle textStyle = workbook.createCellStyle();
textStyle.setDataFormat(fmt.getFormat("#"));
sheet.setDefaultColumnStyle(0, textStyle);
It just sets the whole column style as Text and set category as Text .
However, if you are using XSSF format, it doesn't work(I am using Apache Poi 3.15 and didn't work for me).
In this case you have set style to each cell you want to treat as text in addition to above code using:
cell.setCellStyle(textStyle);
Regarding error, you could use
sheet.addIgnoredErrors(new CellRangeAddress(0,9999,0,9999),IgnoredErrorType.NUMBER_STORED_AS_TEXT );
It ignores the NUMBER_STORED_AS_TEXT error for row 0 till 9999 and column 0 till 9999 and you wont see it.

Look like OP was asking for Apache solution. After some searching I found this answer:
HSSFCellStyle style = book.createCellStyle();
style.setDataFormat(BuiltInFormats.getBuiltInFormat("text"));

In this case, I'm using Apache-POI 3.15, and I had the same problem, so I validated the data in my style, I need numbers >0 and strings:
try {
if (Integer.parseInt(field + "") >= 0) {
int valor = Integer.parseInt(field + "");
cell.setCellValue(valor); //Int
}
} catch (NumberFormatException nfe) {
// no int
try {
if (Double.parseDouble(field + "") >= 0) {
double valor = Double.parseDouble(field + ""); //double
cell.setCellValue(valor);
}
} catch (NumberFormatException nfe2) {
cell.setCellValue(field + ""); //String
}
}

For Apache POI 4.0.1 :
XSSFSheet sheet = workbook.createSheet("MySheetName");
sheet.addIgnoredErrors(new CellRangeAddress(0, 9999, 0, 9999), IgnoredErrorType.NUMBER_STORED_AS_TEXT);
Be careful to cast your sheet to org.apache.poi.xssf.usermodel.XSSFSheet and not to org.apache.poi.ss.usermodel.Sheet, otherwise the method addIgnoredErrors wil be unknown.

How to do Excel's "Convert to Number" in Java

I am reading data from Excel using Apache POI. I want to convert some cells to number while reading in Java as following:
Input 01.0234500
Output 1.02345
Input 412206362371
Output 4.12206E+11
Input 1234.201400002345
Output 1234.2014
When I am using "Convert to Number" in Excel, it works fine. But I want the same output while reading Excel cells in Java.
It can also be achieved using =VALUE() function in Excel. But how do I implement the same functionality in Java?

I think there are a number of ways to accomplish what you stipulate, but the most direct method is just to use the VALUE() function and then evaluate it. This certainly is not the most efficient method, but it works.
Essentially we just read in the value of the input cell, then create a new cell formula cell which contains the VALUE() function with the original value as the parameter. After that we call evalutateInCell to evaluate the VALUE() function and replace the cell value with the results.
XSSFWorkbook wb = new XSSFWorkbook();
XSSFSheet sheet = wb.createSheet("test");
Row row = sheet.createRow(0);
Cell inCell = row.createCell(0);
inCell.setCellValue("01.0234500");
Cell outCell = row.createCell(1);
FormulaEvaluator fev = wb.getCreationHelper().createFormulaEvaluator();
String value = inCell.getStringCellValue();
outCell.setCellFormula("VALUE(" + value + ")");
fev.evaluateInCell(outCell);
You can use the same method to replace the contents of the original cell if that is your preference.

This worked for me
new BigDecimal(cell.getNumericCellValue()).toPlainString()

Apache POI Excel - how to configure columns to be expanded?

I am using Apache POI API to generate excel spreadsheet to output some data.
The problem I am facing is when the spreadsheet is created and opened, columns are not expanded so that some long text like Date formatted text is not showing up on first glance.
I could just double click the column border in excel to expand or drag the border to adjust the column width but there could be 20+ columns and there is no way I want to do that manually every time I open the spreadsheet :(
I found out (though could be wrong method) groupRow() and setColumnGroupCollapsed() might be able to do the trick but no luck. Maybe I'm using it in wrong way.
Sample Code snippet
Workbook wb = new HSSFWorkbook();
CreationHelper createHelper = wb.getCreationHelper();
//create sheet
Sheet sheet = wb.createSheet("masatoSheet");
//not really working yet.... :(
//set group for expand/collapse
//sheet.groupRow(0, 10); //just random fromRow toRow argument values...
//sheet.setColumnGroupCollapsed(0, true);
//create row
Row row = sheet.createRow((short)0);
//put a cell in the row and store long text data
row.createCell(0).setCellValue("Loooooooong text not to show up first");
When this spreadsheet is created, the "Looooooong text not to show up first" string is in the cell but since the column is not expanded only "Loooooooo" is showing up.
How can I configure it so that when I open my spreadsheet, the column is already expanded???

After you have added all your data to the sheet, you can call autoSizeColumn(int column) on your sheet to autofit the columns to the proper size
Here is a link to the API.
See this post for more reference
Problem in fitting the excel cell size to the size of the content when using apache poi

Tip : To make Auto size work , the call to sheet.autoSizeColumn(columnNumber) should be made after populating the data into the excel.
Calling the method before populating the data, will have no effect.

If you want to auto size all columns in a workbook, here is a method that might be useful:
public void autoSizeColumns(Workbook workbook) {
int numberOfSheets = workbook.getNumberOfSheets();
for (int i = 0; i < numberOfSheets; i++) {
Sheet sheet = workbook.getSheetAt(i);
if (sheet.getPhysicalNumberOfRows() > 0) {
Row row = sheet.getRow(sheet.getFirstRowNum());
Iterator<Cell> cellIterator = row.cellIterator();
while (cellIterator.hasNext()) {
Cell cell = cellIterator.next();
int columnIndex = cell.getColumnIndex();
sheet.autoSizeColumn(columnIndex);
}
}
}
}

You can try something like this:
HSSFSheet summarySheet = wb.createSheet();
summarySheet.setColumnWidth(short column, short width);
Here params are:column number in sheet and its width
But,the units of width are pretty small, you can try 4000 for example.

For Excel POI:
sheetName.autoSizeColumn(cellnum);

sample code below
HSSFWorkbook wb = new HSSFWorkbook();
HSSFSheet sheet = wb.createSheet("your sheet name");
HSSFRow row = sheet.createRow(0);
cell = row.createCell(0);
cell.setCellValue("A BIG NAME WITH AUTO SIZE FEATURE ENABLED");
//this is crucial
sheet.autoSizeColumn(0);
//argument must be cell number
cell = row.createCell(1);
cell.setCellValue("a big name without auto size feature enabled");
Check the output and go nuts :)

If you know the count of your columns (f.e. it's equal to a collection list). You can simply use this one liner to adjust all columns of one sheet (if you use at least java 8):
IntStream.range(0, columnCount).forEach(sheet::autoSizeColumn)

You can add this, after your loop.
for (int i = 0; i<53;i++) {
sheet.autoSizeColumn(i);
}

I use below simple solution:
This is your workbook and sheet:
XSSFWorkbook workbook = new XSSFWorkbook();
XSSFSheet sheet = workbook.createSheet("YOUR Workshhet");
then add data to your sheet with columns and rows. Once done with adding data to sheet write following code to autoSizeColumn width.
for (int columnIndex = 0; columnIndex < 15; columnIndex++) {
sheet.autoSizeColumn(columnIndex);
}
Here, instead 15, you add the number of columns in your sheet.
Hope someone helps this.

You can use setColumnWidth() if you want to expand your cell more.

Its very simple, use this one line code
dataSheet.autoSizeColumn(0)
or give the number of column in bracket
dataSheet.autoSizeColumn(cell number )

You can wrap the text as well. PFB sample code:
CellStyle wrapCellStyle = new_workbook.createCellStyle();
wrapCellStyle.setWrapText(true);