Formatting cells in XSLX files generated by XSLT - excel

Question

I'm using XSLT to generate a report with a date column. In the spreadsheet XLSX file, if I pass through the date as a string, when opening it with a spreadsheet package such as Excel, it will assume it's a date (which is correct) but then format it as MM/dd/yyyy when what we actually want is dd/MM/yyyy. This appears to be the spreadsheet package that is causing this, however I was wondering if you could define cell formatting from the XSLT?
Here is the code I'm using to do this:
<xsl:template match="SomeTemplate">
<Row>
...
<Cell>
<xsl:value-of select="ms:format-date(StartTime, 'dd/MM/yyyy')" />
<xsl:text> </xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="ms:format-time(StartTime, 'HH:mm:ss')" />
</Cell>
...
</Row>
</xsl:template>
I've attempted other ways around this such as starting the cell with ' but strangely this didn't work!
Here's an XML sample relevant to the XSLT above:
...
<Destination>
<StartTime>2013-03-07T00:01:09</StartTime>
<EndTime>2013-03-07T10:41:09</EndTime>
...
</Destination>
...

Answer 1

The cell formatting in Excel xml can be done via styles.
I.e you fill the cells with dates in xs:datetime format (you do not need any ms:format-date conversion at all in your example) but specify the cell style though ss:styleId:
<Destination>
<StartTime>2013-03-07T00:01:09</StartTime>
<EndTime>2013-03-07T10:41:09</EndTime>
</Destination>
+
<xsl:stylesheet
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:ms="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
version="1.0">
<xsl:template match="/">
<Workbook>
<Styles>
<Style ss:ID="style_default">
<NumberFormat ss:Format="Short Date"/>
</Style>
<Style ss:ID="style_ddslashmmslashyy">
<NumberFormat ss:Format="dd/mm/yy;#"/>
</Style>
</Styles>
<Worksheet ss:Name="Sheet1">
<Table>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</Table>
</Worksheet>
</Workbook>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="Destination">
<Row>
<Cell ss:StyleID="style_default">
<Data ss:Type="DateTime"><xsl:value-of select="StartTime"/></Data>
</Cell>
<Cell ss:StyleID="style_ddslashmmslashyy">
<Data ss:Type="DateTime"><xsl:value-of select="StartTime"/></Data>
</Cell>
</Row>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>