Updating Formula Result

It’s unclear from the documentation how I would go about doing this.

I want to read in an existing XLS file, update some values, and then get the new computed results of formulae.

For example, if I have this spreadsheet:

A1=3
A2=4
A3=7
A4=sum(A1:A3)

I’d like to update A3 to equal 8 and for A4’s value to then yield 15.

[spadkins]

I discovered that Shift-F9 (“recalculate worksheet” in Excel) does not sufficiently recalculate the spreadsheet but that Ctrl-Shift-Alt-F9 (in Excel) does recalculate the spreadsheet successfully.

However, since I don’t want to have to do a recalculation in Excel, I found this work-around. I actually have calculated the results of the formulas in Node.js, so I tried the following.

// value is the value I want to set to the cell // cell is the cell object from the worksheet if (cell.value && typeof(cell.value) === “object” && cell.value.formula) { cell.value.result = value; // I would think this would work but it doesn’t } else { cell.value = value; }

However, when I try to set the result of a formula cell like that (above), it doesn’t seem to work. The result does not stick. If I print out the cell.value.result before and after, it is unchanged. (!?!) There seems to be some object magic happening on the value of a formula cell that I’m not understanding.

So I did the following instead, and it works perfectly. The new result shows up in Excel for the formula cell when the file is opened up.

// value is the value I want to set to the cell // cell is the cell object from the worksheet if (cell.value && typeof(cell.value) === “object” && cell.value.formula) { cell.value = { formula: cell.value.formula, // copy in the old formula from the old cell.value result: value // put the newly computed value in as the result }; } else { cell.value = value; }

IMPORTANT: This method does not cause Excel to recalculate the values of the formulas. For that, you still have to Enable Editing of the downloaded spreadsheet and press Ctrl-Shift-Alt-F9. This method merely allows that if you have computed the result of the formula correctly in Node.js, then you can set it so that Excel will display it when the file is first opened.

[guyonroche]

Yes - the library is not a replacement for Excel, it won’t calculate the results for you - at least not yet anyway.