Trouble with cfspreadsheet and excel files

Hi,

I have a request from a client to generate an excel spreadsheet from a query. I have the query kicking out the fields and I can generate the excel file without a hitch. The problem comes when the client takes that excel file and then tries to manipulate it. The majority of the trouble comes from fields that should be marked as currency or dates. I am, with some struggle able to generate a "real" date field. Before this Excel was not sorting the dates properly.

I was able to call an excel formula by using this:

<cfset SpreadsheetSetCellFormula(s,"DATEVALUE(#Chr(34)##Replacement_ETD##Chr(34)#)",therow,9)>

Date value forces Excel to acknowledge this as a real date field. However, this fails when this file is manipulated thru excel. The next problem is the currency field. I can't get excel to acknowledge this as a currency. It always comes up custom. When this is set, the SUM function won't work in excel. You can add the fields individually like A1+B1+C1 = TOTAL. This won't be helpful when there are 200 rows.

I was able to get a suggestion from another CF programmer who had a similar situation. He generated the excel file first with the proper headings and set the columns to their proper fields such as date and currency etc.

The next step would be to fill in the fields row by row and they should be properly formatted.

Code:

<cfset filename = expandPath("./reports/arrivals.xlsx")>

<cfspreadsheet  action="read" src = "#filename#"  name = "s" >

          <cfset therow = 0>

          <cfoutput query="myExcel" startrow="1">

               <cfset therow = myExcel.currentrow + 1>

               <cfset SpreadsheetSetCellValue(s, Incumbent, therow, 1)>

               <cfset SpreadsheetSetCellValue(s, Section, therow, 2)>

               <cfset SpreadsheetSetCellValue(s, Position_Number, therow, 3)>

               <cfset SpreadsheetSetCellValue(s, Position_Title, therow, 4)>

               <cfset SpreadsheetSetCellValue(s, Incumbent_Emplyment_Type, therow, 5)>

               <cfset SpreadsheetSetCellValue(s, Incumbent_ETD, therow, 6)>

               <cfset SpreadsheetSetCellValue(s, Tour_Comments, therow, 7)>

               <cfset SpreadsheetSetCellValue(s, Replacement, therow, 8)>

               <cfset SpreadsheetSetCellValue(s, Replacement_ETA, therow, 9)>

          </cfoutput>   

<cfheader name="content-disposition" value="attachment; filename=Departures_(#DateFormat(now(),'mmddyy')#).xls">

<cfcontent type="application/msexcel" variable="#spreadsheetReadBinary(s)#" reset="true">

The data in the cells has already been properly formatted. When this file is generated and streamed to the user the columns are not formatted as expected.

Does anyone else know if this method will work or have a better suggestion on getting CF to generate a proper date and currency field for excel to acknowledge?

Adobe ColdFusion v10 running on RHEL 5

Thanks