Build 5.0.0.53 of xlsgen fixes a problem related to parsing HTML fragments to be inserted in cells, improving how it takes into account the height of the formatting runs.

Build 5.0.0.52 of xlsgen fixes a problem related to copying/pasting custom column widths of empty columns (so columns with no content, only width formatting).

Build 5.0.0.51 of xlsgen fixes a problem related to writing header-footer pictures. Copying header-footer pictures across sheets did not work. It now works in XLS, XLSX and XLSB files.

Build 5.0.0.50 of xlsgen fixes a problem related to handling large pivot tables. It improves how column fields are written to XLS/XLSX/XLSB files and by doing so avoids an unnecessary large memory consumption when the resulting file is opened in Excel. By doing so, in a 32-bit scenario it may avoid a 2 GB process limit crash.

Build 5.0.0.49 of xlsgen improves HTML import, that is, how data formatted as HTML gets imported in xlsgen in order to create an Excel file.

HTML import now supports two mechanisms for splitting a row of data into multiple columns :

- a SeparationCharacters property in the IXlsHTMLImportOptions interface which allows to specity a string used as separation.

- a SplitBySeparatorString property in the IXlsImportColumnSplitter interface, which adds a string rather than single character property if you were already using the column split interface.

Build 5.0.0.48 of xlsgen brings two security updates, one for libPNG (PNG pictures), the other for libwebp (WebP pictures) :

- libpng 1.6.37 --> 1.6.49
- libwebp 1.2.4 --> 1.5.0

No code change needed.

Build 5.0.0.47 of xlsgen fixes a problem related to updating special named ranges, such as the print area of a worksheet, when rows or columns are inserted or added. Before the fix, xlsgen would leave the special named ranges unchanged. Now xlsgen ensures that named ranges are updated accordingly.

Build 5.0.0.46 of xlsgen adds support for a third-party tool generating Excel files that in turn xlsgen is supposed to read. Since Excel can, xlsgen sure must as well !

Build 5.0.0.45 of xlsgen fixes a buffer overrun case that could occur when processing long-format date/time during the loading or writing of XLSX/XLSB files. It would cause xlsgen to crash.

Build 5.0.0.44 of xlsgen improves the compatibility of Excel files generated by xlsgen and consumed by Python-based libraries such as Pandas.

Before this build, reading an XLSX/XLSM Excel files generated by xlsgen with a Pandas script would generate the following kind of error :

TypeError: CellStyle.__init__() got an unexpected keyword argument 'id'

With xlsgen 5.0.0.44 this is no longer the case.

Build 5.0.0.43 of xlsgen is a security update. xlsgen uses an updated version of zlib (1.3.1) to avoid known vulnerabilities existing in prior versions.

Build 5.0.0.42 of xlsgen has a fix for the rendering of pivot tables. Under certain circumstances the rendering may overflow the target area where the pivot table is supposed to live.

Build 5.0.0.41 of xlsgen fixes a problem related to importing large CSV files where the tab character is used as a field separator.

Before this build, xlsgen would filter out tab characters in headers and unintentionally removing actual field separators, causing misalignment in the imported data.

Build 5.0.0.40 of xlsgen improves HTML data import by searching for data within a different HTML markup pattern, in addition to the existing one.

Before this build, xlsgen searches for data in table tr/td markup. Now it tries to search for data in this HTML pattern, and if it can't find anything, tries to search within hierarchical HTML div sections, which are more used nowadays than regular tables.

Build 5.0.0.39 of xlsgen adds a new capability in the CSV data import, where the input data is layed out vertically i.e. in rows, as opposed to columns.

Here is a capture of the input data, i.e. the first actual row of data is made of (A1, B1, C1), then (A2, B2, C2), then ...


Importing transposed CSV data (above), into regular sheet data (below)


And then after instructing the xlsgen CSV import engine that the data is layed out this way :

worksheet.Import.CSV.Options.DataInRows = 3;

Build 5.0.0.38 of xlsgen improves outlines (cell grouping) in a number of ways :

- in worksheet Duplicate scenarios, under certain circumstances, existing outlines were not carried over

- in XLSB files, outline levels were not properly written back to the file

- exposure of outline level in Rows or Columns :

enumOutlineLevel level = worksheet.Rows("12:12").Outline; // returns the outline level of row 12

enumOutlineLevel level = worksheet.Rows("12:15").Outline; // returns the max outline level in rows 12 to 15

Build 5.0.0.37 of xlsgen fixes the support for external references in xlsgen, by loosening how Excel file references with the same short name, stored in different folders, can coexist within the same Excel file.

Build 5.0.0.36 of xlsgen improves the processing speed of fairly large pivot tables using all kinds of sort orderings. The processing time is reduced by an order of magnitude.

Build 5.0.0.35 of xlsgen introduces improved comments. When an author name is specified, it is automatically added to the comment itself, in bold. Before this build, this had to be done by specific code using rich labels (i.e. text with formatting runs).

Here is how it works (C++) :

	xlsgen::IXlsCommentPtr comment11 = worksheet->NewComment(3,2);
        comment11->Author = L"stef";
        comment11->Label = "my comment";
        comment11->Translucid = TRUE;
        comment11->Location(6,5,13,8);

Author name added to comments

Just if you thought the current climate around selling software online was bad, just take a look at this alone, appeared today (july 2024) :

extrait : "Google Chrome will soon throw security warnings at you that you cannot ignore. (...) Whether this new barrier to downloading dangerous files will reduce the number of malicious downloads remains to be seen. It is surely adding complexity to the process and it feels strange that users have to select a reason for wanting to download the file, especially since all lead to the desired result."

extrait : "SAP 2nd quarter 2024 financial results : Software licenses revenue decreased by 28% to €0.2 billion and was down 27% at constant currencies. Cloud and software revenue
was up 10% to €7.17 billion and up 10% at constant currencies. Services revenue was up 6% to €1.11 billion and up 6% at constant
currencies. Total revenue was up 10% to €8.29 billion and up 10% at constant currencies."

Google's chrome is making it harder every year to download software from a website, arbitrarily scoring your software. And SAP, EU's largest software developer, is seeing very deep reduction of software license sales, telling software licensing vendors out there that this is probably time to consider a different career going forward.

It's all written on the wall !! Take notice !!!

And of course, none of this was supposed to happen. It's just the annoyance of a few major companies (Google and Microsoft) making it virtually impossible for a vendor to have their software download and installed by a potential customer.