Rich Formatting

xlsgen > overview > Rich Formatting

Rich formatting is the ability to use more than one formatting within a cell or merged cells. This capability breaks the inherent limitations of a grid-based cell formatting, as in the example below :

Rich formatting only applies to labels. If you have numbers, dates, or anything else, then make sure to translate it to a label if you want to take advantage of it.

A rich formatting object is exposed by the current worksheet. See the IXlsWorksheet for more information. A rich formatting object must be created first.

Rich formatting using labels and styles

A rich formatting provides the ability to iteratively associate a label and a formatting style. That label is a fraction of what makes the full label that gets eventually showed in the cell.

Once the rich label properties are set, the rich label object can be passed onto the current worksheet, in any cell. Or it can be passed to a merged cells object. See IXlsMergedCells for more information.

All those styles must be created first. Styles are either created from the current worksheet, or derived from other styles by duplicating them. See IXlsWorksheet and IXlsStyle for more information.

There is a restriction on styles. Only the font properties are taken into account. See the IXlsFont for more information.

In order to produce the example above, the following code is required :

VB code


Dim style As IXlsStyle
Set style = wksht.NewStyle
style.Font.Size = 14
style.Font.Bold = True
style.Font.Color = colorBlue

style.Apply

Dim style2 As IXlsStyle
Set style2 = style.Duplicate
style2.Font.Color = colorRed
style2.Font.Italic = True

Dim rl As IXlsRichLabel
Set rl = wksht.NewRichLabel
rl.Label "hello ", style
rl.Label "world!", style2
wksht.RichLabel(4, 3) = rl

wksht.ColWidth(3) = 20

C# code


IXlsStyle style = wksht.NewStyle();
style.Font.Size = 14;
style.Font.Bold = 1;
style.Font.Color = (int) xlsgen.enumColorPalette.colorBlue;

style.Apply();

IXlsStyle style2 = style.Duplicate();
style2.Font.Color = (int) xlsgen.enumColorPalette.colorRed;
style2.Font.Italic = 1;

IXlsRichLabel rl = wksht.NewRichLabel();
rl.Label("hello ", style);
rl.Label("world!", style2);
wksht.set_RichLabel(4, 3, rl);

wksht.set_ColWidth(3, 20);

C/C++ code


xlsgen::IXlsStylePtr style = wksht->NewStyle();
style->Font->Size = 14;
style->Font->Bold = TRUE;
style->Font->Color = xlsgen::colorBlue;

style->Apply();

xlsgen::IXlsStylePtr style2 = style->Duplicate();
style2->Font->Color = xlsgen::colorRed;
style2->Font->Italic = TRUE;

xlsgen::IXlsRichLabelPtr rl = wksht->NewRichLabel();
rl->Label("hello ", style);
rl->Label("world!", style2);
wksht->RichLabel[4][3] = rl;

wksht->ColWidth[3] = 20;

Rich formatting using HTML markup

An alternative for reading or writing rich formatting in cells (or in chart elements, text boxes, ...) is to use HTML markup. The advantage of using HTML markup is that you can do the same than with style objects, but you also have the ease of use of HTML markup.

So in order to create the hello world example :

Java code


XlsRichLabel rl = wksht.NewRichLabel();
rl.putHtmlLabel("<font size=\"14\" color=\"0000FF\"><b>hello </b></font><font size=\"14\"  color=\"FF0000\"><b><i>world!</i></b></font>");
wksht.putRichLabel(4, 3, rl);

VB code


Dim rl As IXlsRichLabel
Set rl = wksht.NewRichLabel
rl.HtmlLabel = '<font size="14" color="0000FF"><b>hello </b></font><font size="14"  color="FF0000"><b><i>world!</i></b></font>'
wksht.RichLabel(4, 3) = rl

C# code


IXlsRichLabel rl = wksht.NewRichLabel();
rl.HtmlLabel = "<font size=\"14\" color=\"0000FF\"><b>hello </b></font><font size=\"14\"  color=\"FF0000\"><b><i>world!</i></b></font>";
wksht.set_RichLabel(4, 3, rl);

C/C++ code


xlsgen::IXlsRichLabelPtr rl = wksht->NewRichLabel();
rl->HtmlLabel = L"<font size=\"14\" color=\"0000FF\"><b>hello </b></font><font size=\"14\"  color=\"FF0000\"><b><i>world!</i></b></font>";
wksht->RichLabel[4][3] = rl;

HTML markup is pretty straight forward but in fact there is no reason to learn it because the automatic source code generation tool that ships with xlsgen actually generates source code using HTML markup so you can use Excel for setting up a particular content in cells and simply use the tool in order to obtain the corresponding source code.