[ic] More problems with Spreadsheet Export

Fri Dec 21 12:50:01 2001

On Fri, Dec 21, 2001 at 12:15:53PM -0500, Mike Heins wrote:
> Quoting cfm@maine.com (cfm@maine.com):

> > > > > This is true of Excel '95, but not of '97 and above. I have actually
> > > > > tested spreadsheet import and export of text fields greater than
> > > > > 256 characters on Excel 2000 and '97.
...
> > I missed the start of this.
> > 
> > The DBI modules (parse and write spreadsheet AFAICR) have a 256
> > char limit in them for excel.  DBD::Excel calls them, so it has
> > the same limit.  You need to hack the pm to raise the limit, at
> > least on write.  That's next to impossible to maintain if you
> > are using a package manager (eg rpm or deb).
> > 
> > The amount of data one can enter and save into an excel field in 
> > one recent version appears to be about 15362 chars.  Might be 
> > version specific.
> > 
> > At any rate, counting on more than 256 when the perl modules don't
> > provide more is asking for trouble.  The data is silently truncated.
> 
> This is not true. I cannot characterize all versions of Excel (and Gnumeric),
> but the import/export works fine with the ones I mentioned at arbitrary
> sizes. I provided a few options, and make the proper tweaks in the
> objects at the time of import or export.
> 
> Neither uses DBD::Excel.  <------   That's the ticket, I stand corrected.

For future reference, someone using DBD::Excel or Spreadsheet perl
modules to access same files will run into issues here:

>From Spreadsheet::WriteExcel.pm:
=item * Move to Excel97/2000 format as standard. This will allow 
strings greater than 255 characters and hope fully Unicode. The 
Excel 5 format will be optional. This will be in the next major 
release of the module. All other features are on hold.

This is limit it package Spreadsheet::WriteExcel::Worksheet.pm:
    my $rowmax                  = 65536; # cfm change from 16384 in Excel 5

> 
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-- 

Christopher F. Miller, Publisher                               cfm@maine.com
MaineStreet Communications, Inc           208 Portland Road, Gray, ME  04039
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