sheetjs/docbits/81_writeopts.md
2022-03-19 21:54:41 -04:00

5.3 KiB

Writing Options

The exported write and writeFile functions accept an options argument:

Option Name Default Description
type Output data encoding (see Output Type below)
cellDates false Store dates as type d (default is n)
bookSST false Generate Shared String Table **
bookType "xlsx" Type of Workbook (see below for supported formats)
sheet "" Name of Worksheet for single-sheet formats **
compression false Use ZIP compression for ZIP-based formats **
Props Override workbook properties when writing **
themeXLSX Override theme XML when writing XLSX/XLSB/XLSM **
ignoreEC true Suppress "number as text" errors **
  • bookSST is slower and more memory intensive, but has better compatibility with older versions of iOS Numbers
  • The raw data is the only thing guaranteed to be saved. Features not described in this README may not be serialized.
  • cellDates only applies to XLSX output and is not guaranteed to work with third-party readers. Excel itself does not usually write cells with type d so non-Excel tools may ignore the data or error in the presence of dates.
  • Props is an object mirroring the workbook Props field. See the table from the Workbook File Properties section.
  • if specified, the string from themeXLSX will be saved as the primary theme for XLSX/XLSB/XLSM files (to xl/theme/theme1.xml in the ZIP)
  • Due to a bug in the program, some features like "Text to Columns" will crash Excel on worksheets where error conditions are ignored. The writer will mark files to ignore the error by default. Set ignoreEC to false to suppress.

Supported Output Formats

For broad compatibility with third-party tools, this library supports many output formats. The specific file type is controlled with bookType option:

bookType file ext container sheets Description
xlsx .xlsx ZIP multi Excel 2007+ XML Format
xlsm .xlsm ZIP multi Excel 2007+ Macro XML Format
xlsb .xlsb ZIP multi Excel 2007+ Binary Format
biff8 .xls CFB multi Excel 97-2004 Workbook Format
biff5 .xls CFB multi Excel 5.0/95 Workbook Format
biff4 .xls none single Excel 4.0 Worksheet Format
biff3 .xls none single Excel 3.0 Worksheet Format
biff2 .xls none single Excel 2.0 Worksheet Format
xlml .xls none multi Excel 2003-2004 (SpreadsheetML)
ods .ods ZIP multi OpenDocument Spreadsheet
fods .fods none multi Flat OpenDocument Spreadsheet
wk3 .wk3 none multi Lotus Workbook (WK3)
csv .csv none single Comma Separated Values
txt .txt none single UTF-16 Unicode Text (TXT)
sylk .sylk none single Symbolic Link (SYLK)
html .html none single HTML Document
dif .dif none single Data Interchange Format (DIF)
dbf .dbf none single dBASE II + VFP Extensions (DBF)
wk1 .wk1 none single Lotus Worksheet (WK1)
rtf .rtf none single Rich Text Format (RTF)
prn .prn none single Lotus Formatted Text
eth .eth none single Ethercalc Record Format (ETH)
  • compression only applies to formats with ZIP containers.
  • Formats that only support a single sheet require a sheet option specifying the worksheet. If the string is empty, the first worksheet is used.
  • writeFile will automatically guess the output file format based on the file extension if bookType is not specified. It will choose the first format in the aforementioned table that matches the extension.

Output Type

The type argument for write mirrors the type argument for read:

type output
"base64" string: Base64 encoding of the file
"binary" string: binary string (byte n is data.charCodeAt(n))
"string" string: JS string (characters interpreted as UTF8)
"buffer" nodejs Buffer
"array" ArrayBuffer, fallback array of 8-bit unsigned int
"file" string: path of file that will be created (nodejs only)
  • For compatibility with Excel, csv output will always include the UTF-8 byte order mark.