excelcom

Easy to use excel modification library using JNA and COM. Works on Windows only. Covers only really basic operations such as reading and writing content and coloring.

excelcom requires Java Version 1.6 or higher and the COM service (normally included with an office installation).

How to import

Add the following dependency to your pom.xml:

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.github.lprc</groupId>
        <artifactId>excelcom</artifactId>
        <version>0.0.5</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

How to use

 import excelcom.api.*;
 import excelcom.util.Util;
 
 // note that conn.quit() MUST be called later for uninitializing COM correctly.
 // otherwise opened excel proecesses will remain in task manager.
 try {
     // connect to a new excel instance and don't show any dialogs
     ExcelConnection conn = ExcelConnection.connect();
     conn.setDisplayAlerts(false);
     
    
     // open a workbook
     Workbook wb = conn.openWorkbook(new File("test.xlsx"));
     
    
     // open a worksheet
     Worksheet ws = wb.getWorksheet("Tabelle1");
     
    
     // write some content, mutliple cell range and unary cell range
     ws.setContent("A4:B5", new Object[][]{ {123, 456.5}, {"test", "äöüß"} });
     ws.setContent("A6", 432.4f);
     
    
     // read content
     Util.printMatrix(ws.getContent("A4:B6"));
     System.out.println(ws.getUnaryContent("A4"));
     
    
     // colorize some cells
     ws.setFillColor("A4", ExcelColor.LIGHT_GREEN);
     ws.setFontColor("A5", ExcelColor.RED);
     
    
     // attach some comments (works for one cell only)
     ws.setComment("A6", "test comment");
     
    
     // save and close workbook
     wb.close(true);
 } finally {
     // quit excel instance and uninitialize COM
     conn.quit();
 }

Known problems

Since COM doesn't provide exact failure descriptions and calling the same COM function can have multiple return types, there a some tradeoffs:

• Setting a comment to a cell works for one cell at a time only. Calling Worksheet#setComment with a multiple cell range throws an IllegalArgumentException.

• Getting a color from multiple cell range which has different colors of the same type (e.g. different fill colors) results in a NullPointerException.

Improvements to the code of any kind are very welcome!