Excel formating using JXL

Question

I generating a excel sheet using jxl, a number of the columns have data that is preceeded by a hidden apostrophe. The apostrophe can only be seen when you click on the cell. I have looked and can't find a post that addresses this. Can anyone out there tell me how to remove this using jxl or any other.

Answer 1

I've a feeling that the apostrophe indicates to Excel that the data in the cell should be treated as text.

Are you writing your cells to the spreadsheet as the correct types? E.g. jxl.write.Number, jxl.write.Label, jxl.write.DateTime, all of which implement jxl.write.WritableCell.

More information about how you're writing these cells, what data they contain and how it appears in Excel would be useful.