Is it possible to create an Excel checkbox using Apache Poi? - excel

Question

Someone asked this question: How do I create form controls (radio, checkbox, buttons, etc.) in Excel using Apache POI (Java)? before but no answers yet.
Also is it possible to make certain rows read only?

Answer 1

No not as far as i know, but you can create an Excel file with checkboxes that you can read back into Java using POI in this fashion:
Create an Excel file and save as template.xlsm (so with macro's).
Insert VBA macro in the Excel file (use 'Developer' tab) and save + close the file:
Sub addCheckBoxes()
Dim i As Integer
Dim cel As Range
i = 2
For Each cel In Sheets("Sheet1").Range("A" & 3 & ":A" & 1000)
i = i + 1
If Cells(i, "B").Value <> "" Then
cel.Value = 0
With ActiveSheet.OLEObjects.Add(ClassType:="Forms.CheckBox.1", Left:=cel.Left, Top:=cel.Top, Width:=cel.Width, Height:=cel.Height)
.LinkedCell = "Sheet1!$A$" & i
.Object.Caption = "<-use"
End With
End If
Next
End Sub
Let POI read this excel file as a new Workbook:
Workbook wb = WorkbookFactory.create(new File("path to your file/template.xlsm"));
Write all your data to the file (keep Column A empty for this example !). In this example we will add a checkbox to all cells in column 'A' that have a value/text in column 'B'. It checks every row from row 3 till 1000.
Write the Workbook to file:
FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream("path to your file/file_with_checkboxes.xlsm");
Create a file: start_excel_file.vbs add add the code as text:
Set objExcel = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
Set objWorkbook = objExcel.Workbooks.Open("path to your file/file_with_checkboxes.xlsm")
objExcel.Application.Visible = True
objExcel.Application.Run "file_with_checkboxes.xlsm!addCheckBoxes"
Use Java to open the file through the command line by running this file: start_excel_file.vbs
The code in the start_excel_file.vbs file will open the excel file and at start up it will create the checkboxes using the addCheckBoxes() Macro. (Macro's must be enabled !)
In this code i created a boolean text that is not visible in the Excel file but will be set to TRUE if selected and FALSE is unselected afterwards. If you read the file with POI back into Java it will ignore the checkboxes but is able to read the boolean text so in Java you know what was/is the setting. (empty or FALSE = false / TRUE is true)
hope this helps and good luck =^)