How to process old excel .xls files using POI?

Question

I switched from jxl to poi since POI has more features. However, I wasn't able to process the xls files that were generated in the old format. Now I am getting this error:

org.apache.poi.hssf.OldExcelFormatException: The supplied spreadsheet seems to be Excel 5.0/7.0 (BIFF5) format. POI only supports BIFF8 format (from Excel versions 97/2000/XP/2003)

Now I am thinking to use both JXL as wells as POI depending on the xls version so for old format xls files I will use jxl while for newer versions I will use POI. Is this a good solution? Are there any alternatives?

Answer 1

For old Excel format files, you have the following alternatives:

1. HSSF, the POI implementation of the Excel '97(-2007) file format.
   • If you just want to extract the textual content, then you can use OldExcelExtractor which will pull only the text and numbers from the file.
   • If you need the values from a specific cells, then you'll need to take an approach a bit like OldExcelExtractor, process the file at the record level, and check for the co-ordinates on OldStringRecord, NumberRecord, OldFormulaRecord and friends.
2. Like you already mentioned, JXL can handle some cases too.
3. Use a JDBC/ODBC driver. It is not as flexible as HSSF but for some old formats it is the only way to extract the information.