Is there a compatibility issue between macros written for XLS, XLSX and XLSM? Will the same macro work for all workbooks?
Excel – compatibility issue between macros written for XLS, XLSX and XLSM
excelvba
Related Solutions
You can use a library called ExcelLibrary. It's a free, open source library posted on Google Code:
This looks to be a port of the PHP ExcelWriter that you mentioned above. It will not write to the new .xlsx format yet, but they are working on adding that functionality in.
It's very simple, small and easy to use. Plus it has a DataSetHelper that lets you use DataSets and DataTables to easily work with Excel data.
ExcelLibrary seems to still only work for the older Excel format (.xls files), but may be adding support in the future for newer 2007/2010 formats.
You can also use EPPlus, which works only for Excel 2007/2010 format files (.xlsx files). There's also NPOI which works with both.
There are a few known bugs with each library as noted in the comments. In all, EPPlus seems to be the best choice as time goes on. It seems to be more actively updated and documented as well.
Also, as noted by @АртёмЦарионов below, EPPlus has support for Pivot Tables and ExcelLibrary may have some support (Pivot table issue in ExcelLibrary)
Here are a couple links for quick reference:
ExcelLibrary - GNU Lesser GPL
EPPlus - GNU (LGPL) - No longer maintained
EPPlus 5 - Polyform Noncommercial - Starting May 2020
NPOI - Apache License
Here some example code for ExcelLibrary:
Here is an example taking data from a database and creating a workbook from it. Note that the ExcelLibrary code is the single line at the bottom:
//Create the data set and table
DataSet ds = new DataSet("New_DataSet");
DataTable dt = new DataTable("New_DataTable");
//Set the locale for each
ds.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
dt.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
//Open a DB connection (in this example with OleDB)
OleDbConnection con = new OleDbConnection(dbConnectionString);
con.Open();
//Create a query and fill the data table with the data from the DB
string sql = "SELECT Whatever FROM MyDBTable;";
OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(sql, con);
OleDbDataAdapter adptr = new OleDbDataAdapter();
adptr.SelectCommand = cmd;
adptr.Fill(dt);
con.Close();
//Add the table to the data set
ds.Tables.Add(dt);
//Here's the easy part. Create the Excel worksheet from the data set
ExcelLibrary.DataSetHelper.CreateWorkbook("MyExcelFile.xls", ds);
Creating the Excel file is as easy as that. You can also manually create Excel files, but the above functionality is what really impressed me.
The solution is to coerce the column of class variables to type factor:
df.train_C$V1 <- factor(df.train_C$V1)
then run the model and predict()
as before. I changed nothing else and this one mod 'fixed' the issue. Courtesy Andy Liaw at r-help.
Best Answer
There are significant differences between these formats :
.XLS
is intended to be used for Excel 2003 and above, so your VBA code needs to be backwards compatible for earlier versions of Excel (<2007).XLSX
is the Excel 2007 format that cannot store VBA code..XLSM
or.XLSB
are the Excel 2007 format that allow you to save VBA code with the workbook. As Sydenam said, the differences between these two is the way the workbook is stored.In short:
.XLSB
is the binary format (equivalent to.XLS
for 2007+ version) whereas.XLSM
is the OOXML format.See When should the xlsm or xlsb formats be used? for more information.
Addendum for backward compatibility
I can't see any easy way to tell you how it can be backwards compatible, we can't be that generic. You can see on Ozgrid the new methods and properties that were added in Excel 2007. You can also find here some tips on how to develop on Excel 2007.
The Ozgrid page will give you the new elements of Excel 2007 and then will tell you what you shouldn't use if you wanted to be backwards compatible.