Error of Special Characters in Export to Excel

Question

Hi,
I guess the error you are getting is a Parser error. To solve this problem, before putting the data on the XML file, you have to pass the data through an encoding process. For UTF-8 the code for encoding should be something like.
  public java.lang.String encodeSpecialChar( java.lang.String attributeValue )
    //@@begin encodeSpecialChar()
          //Created By : AVIK SANYAL Date : 28 March 2008.
          //          Check for special characters like "&" in the String.
          //      replace "&" with "&"
          //      Returns the new encoded String.
          try {
               if (attributeValue != null) {
                    attributeValue = attributeValue.replaceAll("&", "&");
                    attributeValue = attributeValue.replaceAll("<", ""&lt;"");// this is & lt
                    attributeValue = attributeValue.replaceAll(">", ""&gt;"");//this is & gt
               } else {
          } catch (Exception ex) {
               //          wdComponentAPI.getMessageManager().reportException(
               //               "Failed to convert the character.",
               //               true);
          //Returns the encoded String.
          return attributeValue;
    //@@end
Try this and let me know if this works. The reason is that in Binary Cache method, the data is passed in an XML format and the MS-Excel application reads this to show it in the spreadsheet. The characters '&', '<' and '>' can cause failure in reading from this file.
Thank You
Avik
Edited by: AVIK SANYAL on Sep 12, 2008 10:45 AM

Answer 1

OK....!!!!!
just download the Excel file (*.xls) and try open with Word-MS. In the document search by the string that you have mentioned in the question. (Use Ctrl +F).
If you see something like "ABC bla bla ba & instead of  &amp ,  then you have to pass the data through the code I've mentioned.
You can get more details on encoding special characters UTF-8 in Google.com or Sun Websites etc.
You can also encode the & in hexadecimal format to get the desired output.