Giant white boxes problem is back when creating .XLSX templates for JXLS or Apache POI on LibreOffice Calc

[mariomlc]

This topic is important for those who tried to use LibreOffice Calc to create templates to be used with Excel Report Generators based on Java JXLS library and/or Apache POI. I reproduced in Calc v.7.3.7.2 a problem that once has been discussed in a closed topic a long time ago: Infinite white boxes

LibreOffice’s .xlsx save is STILL NOT FULLY COMPATIBLE with Apache POI/JXLS for cell comments and anchor mapping.

• Tag substitution does NOT work if the anchor cell “does not exist” in sheet XML (you must type at least a dot, a space or anything else but leaving empty in the cell with the jx:area… comment).
• If you last save it as XLSX on Calc before using it as a JXLS template, JXLS will generate the final report with a huge white text box that covers all the report contents.
• If you last save it as XLSX on Microsoft Excel, JXLS will generate the final report normally, without creating any alien giant text box on top of your report.

I don’t know why it happens, I just wanted to share the workaround… and it unfortunately passes through having a MS Excel license in order to, at least, do the last save on the template file.

[mikekaganski]

tdf#117274 was fixed in 6.4. But the fix only prevented creation of the new objects, but it couldn’t remove already created bad objects (there is nothing that differentiates these bad objects from normal objects created by user).

And 7.3 is not a current version, too; so problems in that version tell nothing about current state of things

[mikekaganski]

@mariomlc

• If you last save it as XLSX on Calc before using it as a JXLS template, JXLS will generate the final report with a huge white text box that covers all the report contents.

Oh - so this has absolutely nothing to do with that “infinite white boxes” problem; and it even has nothing to do with LibreOffice - it’s about “Java JXLS library and/or Apache POI”, which are not fully compliant with the XLSX standard (that is ~expected: it’s hard to be 100% compliant with that huge standard), and can only process the variant of the markup that Excel produces. Did you notify them?