[excel] Setting Column width in Apache POI

I am writing a tool in Java using Apache POI API to convert an XML to MS Excel. In my XML input, I receive the column width in points. But the Apache POI API has a slightly queer logic for setting column width based on font size etc. (refer API docs)

Is there a formula for converting points to the width as expected by Excel? Has anyone done this before?

There is a setRowHeightInPoints() method though :( but none for column.

P.S.: The input XML is in ExcelML format which I have to convert to MS Excel.

I answered my problem with a default width for all columns and cells, like below:

int width = 15; // Where width is number of caracters 
sheet.setDefaultColumnWidth(width);

With Scala there is a nice Wrapper spoiwo

You can do it like this:

Workbook(mySheet.withColumns(
      Column(autoSized = true),
      Column(width = new Width(100, WidthUnit.Character)),
      Column(width = new Width(100, WidthUnit.Character)))
    )

You can use also util methods mentioned in this blog: Getting cell witdth and height from excel with Apache POI. It can solve your problem.

Copy & paste from that blog:

static public class PixelUtil {

    public static final short EXCEL_COLUMN_WIDTH_FACTOR = 256;
    public static final short EXCEL_ROW_HEIGHT_FACTOR = 20;
    public static final int UNIT_OFFSET_LENGTH = 7;
    public static final int[] UNIT_OFFSET_MAP = new int[] { 0, 36, 73, 109, 146, 182, 219 };

    public static short pixel2WidthUnits(int pxs) {
        short widthUnits = (short) (EXCEL_COLUMN_WIDTH_FACTOR * (pxs / UNIT_OFFSET_LENGTH));
        widthUnits += UNIT_OFFSET_MAP[(pxs % UNIT_OFFSET_LENGTH)];
        return widthUnits;
    }

    public static int widthUnits2Pixel(short widthUnits) {
        int pixels = (widthUnits / EXCEL_COLUMN_WIDTH_FACTOR) * UNIT_OFFSET_LENGTH;
        int offsetWidthUnits = widthUnits % EXCEL_COLUMN_WIDTH_FACTOR;
        pixels += Math.floor((float) offsetWidthUnits / ((float) EXCEL_COLUMN_WIDTH_FACTOR / UNIT_OFFSET_LENGTH));
        return pixels;
    }

    public static int heightUnits2Pixel(short heightUnits) {
        int pixels = (heightUnits / EXCEL_ROW_HEIGHT_FACTOR);
        int offsetWidthUnits = heightUnits % EXCEL_ROW_HEIGHT_FACTOR;
        pixels += Math.floor((float) offsetWidthUnits / ((float) EXCEL_ROW_HEIGHT_FACTOR / UNIT_OFFSET_LENGTH));
        return pixels;
    }
}

So when you want to get cell width and height you can use this to get value in pixel, values are approximately.

PixelUtil.heightUnits2Pixel((short) row.getHeight())
PixelUtil.widthUnits2Pixel((short) sh.getColumnWidth(columnIndex));

Unfortunately there is only the function setColumnWidth(int columnIndex, int width) from class Sheet; in which width is a number of characters in the standard font (first font in the workbook) if your fonts are changing you cannot use it. There is explained how to calculate the width in function of a font size. The formula is:

width = Truncate([{NumOfVisibleChar} * {MaxDigitWidth} + {5PixelPadding}] / {MaxDigitWidth}*256) / 256

You can always use autoSizeColumn(int column, boolean useMergedCells) after inputting the data in your Sheet.

Please be carefull with the usage of autoSizeColumn(). It can be used without problems on small files but please take care that the method is called only once (at the end) for each column and not called inside a loop which would make no sense.

Please avoid using autoSizeColumn() on large Excel files. The method generates a performance problem.

We used it on a 110k rows/11 columns file. The method took ~6m to autosize all columns.

For more details have a look at: How to speed up autosizing columns in apache POI?