how to read exact cell content of excel file in apache POI

Question

when I read a content of cell for e.g. if it is in date format it casts into some another value like 12/31/2099 -> 46052 and $50.00 -> 50 and 50.00% -> 0.5.

But what I want is to get the exact string value for every cell.

My Code is like this:

cell.setCellType(Cell.CELL_TYPE_STRING);
String str = cell.getStringCellValue();

Answer 1

No need for explicit formatting, Apache POI provides for DataFormatter class as utility to leverage the format of the content as it appears on the excel. You can choose custom formats too, a simple example would be (cell is reference to your XSSFCell object):

System.out.println(new DataFormatter().formatCellValue(cell));

Excel sheet looks like:

Using DataFormatter (sop statement above) prints:

50%
$ 1,200
12/21/14

Where your normal formatting would print:

0.5
1200.0
21-Dec-2014