Java POI : How to read Excel cell value and not the formula computing it?

java excel apache-poi notimplementedexception
Aminoss picture Aminoss · Sep 30, 2011 · Viewed 103.5k times · Source

I am using Apache POI API to getting values from an Excel file. Everything is working great except with cells containing formulas. In fact, the cell.getStringCellValue() is returning the formula used in the cell and not the value of the cell.

I tried to use evaluateFormulaCell() method but it's not working because I am using GETPIVOTDATA Excel formula and this formula is not implemented in the API:

Exception in thread "main" org.apache.poi.ss.formula.eval.NotImplementedException: Error evaluating cell Landscape!K11
    at org.apache.poi.ss.formula.WorkbookEvaluator.addExceptionInfo(WorkbookEvaluator.java:321)
    at org.apache.poi.ss.formula.WorkbookEvaluator.evaluateAny(WorkbookEvaluator.java:288)
    at org.apache.poi.ss.formula.WorkbookEvaluator.evaluate(WorkbookEvaluator.java:221)
    at org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.HSSFFormulaEvaluator.evaluateFormulaCellValue(HSSFFormulaEvaluator.java:320)
    at org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.HSSFFormulaEvaluator.evaluateFormulaCell(HSSFFormulaEvaluator.java:213)
    at fromExcelToJava.ExcelSheetReader.unAutreTest(ExcelSheetReader.java:193)
    at fromExcelToJava.ExcelSheetReader.main(ExcelSheetReader.java:224)
Caused by: org.apache.poi.ss.formula.eval.NotImplementedException: GETPIVOTDATA
    at org.apache.poi.hssf.record.formula.functions.NotImplementedFunction.evaluate(NotImplementedFunction.java:42)

Answer

Gagravarr picture Gagravarr · Sep 30, 2011

For formula cells, excel stores two things. One is the Formula itself, the other is the "cached" value (the last value that the forumla was evaluated as)

If you want to get the last cached value (which may no longer be correct, but as long as Excel saved the file and you haven't changed it it should be), you'll want something like:

 for(Cell cell : row) {
     if(cell.getCellType() == Cell.CELL_TYPE_FORMULA) {
        System.out.println("Formula is " + cell.getCellFormula());
        switch(cell.getCachedFormulaResultType()) {
            case Cell.CELL_TYPE_NUMERIC:
                System.out.println("Last evaluated as: " + cell.getNumericCellValue());
                break;
            case Cell.CELL_TYPE_STRING:
                System.out.println("Last evaluated as \"" + cell.getRichStringCellValue() + "\"");
                break;
        }
     }
 }

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