Question

I am running into the same problem as in this question:

How do you prevent leading zeros from being stripped when importing an excel doc using c#

But I am not sure if that is the best solution for my scenario. Here is the code I am using to do the export. Does anyone know what I can change to prevent the leading 0’s from being stripped off?

private static void Export_with_XSLT_Web(DataSet dsExport,                                           string[] sHeaders,                                           string[] sFileds,                                           ExportFormat FormatType,                                           string FileName) {          HttpContext.Current.Response.Clear();         HttpContext.Current.Response.Buffer = true;          HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = 'application/vnd.ms-excel';         HttpContext.Current.Response.AppendHeader('content-disposition',                                                    'attachment;                                                    filename=' + FileName);         }          // XSLT to use for transforming this dataset.                                MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();         XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(stream, Encoding.UTF8);          CreateStylesheet(writer, sHeaders, sFileds, FormatType);         writer.Flush();         stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);          XmlDataDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDataDocument(dsExport);         XslTransform xslTran = new XslTransform();         xslTran.Load(new XmlTextReader(stream), null, null);          using(StringWriter sw = new StringWriter())         {             xslTran.Transform(xmlDoc, null, sw, null);              HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(sw.ToString());                             writer.Close();             stream.Close();             HttpContext.Current.Response.End();         }     } } 

Here is the method that creates the stylesheet, is there anything in here that I can change to bring in some or all fields as text.

private static void CreateStylesheet(XmlTextWriter writer,                                       string[] sHeaders,                                       string[] sFileds,                                       ExportFormat FormatType) {     try     {         // xsl:stylesheet         string ns = 'http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform';         writer.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;         writer.WriteStartDocument();         writer.WriteStartElement('xsl', 'stylesheet', ns);         writer.WriteAttributeString('version', '1.0');         writer.WriteStartElement('xsl:output');         writer.WriteAttributeString('method', 'text');         writer.WriteAttributeString('version', '4.0');         writer.WriteEndElement();          // xsl-template         writer.WriteStartElement('xsl:template');         writer.WriteAttributeString('match', '/');          // xsl:value-of for headers         for(int i = 0; i < sHeaders.Length; i++)         {             writer.WriteString('\'');             writer.WriteStartElement('xsl:value-of');             writer.WriteAttributeString('select', ''' + sHeaders[i] + ''');             writer.WriteEndElement(); // xsl:value-of             writer.WriteString('\'');         }          // xsl:for-each         writer.WriteStartElement('xsl:for-each');         writer.WriteAttributeString('select', 'Export/Values');         writer.WriteString('\r\n');          // xsl:value-of for data fields         for(int i = 0; i < sFileds.Length; i++)         {             writer.WriteString('\'');             writer.WriteStartElement('xsl:value-of');             writer.WriteAttributeString('select', sFileds[i]);             writer.WriteEndElement(); // xsl:value-of             writer.WriteString('\'');         }          writer.WriteEndElement(); // xsl:for-each         writer.WriteEndElement(); // xsl-template         writer.WriteEndElement(); // xsl:stylesheet         writer.WriteEndDocument();     }     catch(Exception Ex)     {         throw Ex;     } } 

Answer 1

I don’t know the output of your XSL transformation: I will assume it’s the xml format for Excel. Trying to reverse the process I wrote three numbers (007) in an Excel sheet: once as number, once as text and once as number but formatted to show 3 digits padded with zeros. Then I saved it as xml and looked at it. Here is the fragment:

<Row>     <Cell><Data ss:Type='Number'>7</Data></Cell> </Row> <Row>     <Cell><Data ss:Type='String' x:Ticked='1'>007</Data></Cell> </Row> <Row>     <Cell ss:StyleID='s22'><Data ss:Type='Number'>7</Data></Cell> </Row> 

I’m not copying the style but you can easily do it.

Edit: as always Google Is Your Friend (and mine, too 😉 ): http://www.creativyst.com/Doc/Articles/CSV/CSV01.htm#CSVAndExcel.

Edit (2): I thought the link was enough. The article is saying that (if you are sure the target is only Excel) you can use an Excel-specific CSV syntax. So in your case and looking at your code I think you should insert the missing commas and change the opening

writer.WriteString('\''); 

into

writer.WriteString('=\''); 

Beware that I didn’t try.

Just one question out of curiosity: wouldn’t it be simpler to just output what you need working on the DataSet instead of

• transforming it in XML
• generating an ad-hoc XSL
• performing the XSL transformation
• copying the result to the Response stream

?