Add zero width space to excel cell value

[Mathew Antony]

Hi,

I am generating an excel sheet using apache poi HSSFWorkbook. One of the excel column is showing error message about "Number stored as text". This column is not a numeric column,and want to keep that column as character column.

So while adding value to cell , I add a zero width Unicode character also as follows cell.setCellValue(cellData + "\\U+200B");

The issue is, cell value just print "U+200B" in excel sheet, instead of using the Unicode zero width space.

I would like to know, is there any way I can add a zero width space to poi cell value in java.

I want to keep the column as character column, but want to get rid of the message"Number stored as text" in excel.

Thanks

[Paul Clapham]

It does that because you added the 7-character string "\U+200B" to the cell, rather than the character U+200B. The way to express that character as a Unicode escape in Java is like this:

"\u200B"

[Mathew Antony]

Thank you Paul

[Paul Clapham]

Hopefully that did what you wanted. But wouldn't you get the same effect from just changing the cell's type to Cell.CELL_TYPE_STRING? Or did you try that already?

(I'm not sure that would make Excel believe the cell was a string cell, but it seems to me like it should. On the other hand I haven't tried it myself so maybe it doesn't.)