Question

I’m playing around with an PHP – MS Excel integration these days. My task
is to open an existing spreadsheet, add some data and save the filled
spreadsheet as a new file. Basically sort of a template filling engine,
eventhough xlsx files are used as templates.

I looked into PHPExcel which seems to be fairly nice framework. In order
to implement a proof of concept I did the following (reduced to the minimum
required to illustrate what I need to do):

$objReader = PHPExcel_IOFactory::createReader('Excel2007');
$objReader->setReadDataOnly(true);  
$objPHPExcel = $objReader->load("myTemplateToFill.xlsx");

    //Here comes the actual filling
$objWorksheet = $objPHPExcel->createSheet();
$objWorksheet->setTitle('Apple')    ;
$objWorksheet->setCellValue('A1', 'Banana');    
$objPHPExcel->setActiveSheetIndex(0);

$objWriter = new PHPExcel_Writer_Excel2007($objPHPExcel);
$objWriter->save('myFilledTemplate.xlsx');

Running this I found that a new file is created, my daat is inserted but sadly with
all of the existing formatting is lost.

So the question is, is there a way to make PHPExcel keep those formattigs in the new
file? Or to go even further: is it possible to keep charts etc. in a template file
and fill those the way I tried?

Thanks in advance for all of your experience shared!

K

Answer 1

Hum, you are creating an new workSheet, wich has no format as default. I think you have to add your values to the existing sheet ?

$objPHPExcel->setActiveSheetIndex(0); // index of sheet
$workSheet = $objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet();
$workSheet->setTitle('Pflaume');