Re: WriteExcel and formulas

[jmcnamara]

in reply to WriteExcel and formulas

The code you show should work. I fleshed it out to a working example(*) and it shows the correct MAX and AVERAGE for valid cell ranges. If the cell range is empty then the result will be zero/#DIV0! like the corresponding Excel formula:

    #!/usr/bin/perl

    use strict;
    use warnings;
    use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel;
    use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel::Utility;

    my $workbook  = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new( 'test.xls' );
    my $worksheet = $workbook->add_worksheet();

    $worksheet->write( 'B2', 3 );
    $worksheet->write( 'B3', 5 );


    my @cols = ( 1, 2 );
    my $row  = 3;

    my $i = 1;

    for ( @cols ) {
        my $s = xl_rowcol_to_cell( 1,        $i );
        my $e = xl_rowcol_to_cell( $row - 1, $i );

        my $range = "$s:$e";
        print "$i:Range:$range\n";
        $worksheet->write_formula( $row,     $i, '=MAX(' . $range . ')
+' );
        $worksheet->write_formula( $row + 1, $i, '=AVERAGE(' . $range 
+. ')' );

        $i++;
    }


    __END__

Spreadsheet::WriteExcel does sometimes mis-parse complex formulae resulting in an invalid 0 result. However, that isn't the case here.

* You should have done this when asking the questing. It only takes a few extra lines of code.

--
John.

[rohit_raghu]

It seems that formulas inserted using WriteExcel can't be read by Excel Viewer. Is that a problem with the viewer or the module?

[jmcnamara]

Is that a problem with the viewer or the module?

A little bit of both.

Spreadsheet::WriteExcel writes formulas in the required binary RPN format but it doesn't write the result of the formula since it wouldn't be practical to calculate the result of arbitrary formulae. So instead it writes 0 as a default formula result. Excel and most other spreadsheet applications recalculate the result of formulas when the file is loaded so that generally isn't an issue.

However, Excel Viewer doesn't calculate formulae so all you see is the default 0 result.

You can work around this by explicitly specifying the calculated value of the formula at the end of the argument list:

    $worksheet->write_fromula('A1', '=2+2', $format, 4);

    # Or:

    $worksheet->write('A1', '=2+2', $format, 4);

--
John.

[rohit_raghu]

Thanks,

I discovered another way by accident. Simply open the file on a system with excel and save it. MS Excel recalculates formulas in files last saved by an earlier version of excel.