In Excel adding a leading apostrophe changes for instance dates to text and the
apostrophe is not shown, except for in the formula line. (For example adding
'29.11.2010 is shown as 29.10.2010 .)
I want to do this when using POI. When setting the cell value I add a
apostrophe in front of a string which represents a date. But the apostrophe is
shown when opening the resulting file in Excel. If I add a date manually in
another cell in the same file the apostrophe is not shown.
Does the apostrophe trick not work with POI?
(Adding the dates as text by using a string or changing format of the cell to
text isn't an option. By doing this the resulting file shows the dates as left
aligned text, but I am importing the file to a third party software and in the
resulting spreadsheet such cells are changed to the "Excel integer" the date
represents. And manually changing the cell formats afterwards is not an
option.)
-Paal Larsen.
