JExcel/POI: Creating a cell as type Text - apache-poi

Question

I have a requirement that involves reading values from an excel spreadsheet, and populating a spreadsheet for users to modify and re-upload to our application. One of these cells contains a text string of 5 characters that may be letters, numbers, or a combination of both. Some of these strings contain only numbers, and begin with a zero. Because of this, the cell type is Text; however, when I use Apache POI or JExcel to populate a spreadsheet for the users to modify it is always set as cell type General.
Is there a way using either of these libraries, or some other excel api that I have not seen yet, to specify that a cell have type Text?

Answer 1

My co-worker just found a way to accomplish this. In JExcel, it can be accomplished by using a WritableCellFormat such as:
WritableCellFormat numberAsTextFormat = new WritableCellFormat(NumberFormats.TEXT);
Then, when you are creating your cell to add to a sheet you just pass in the format as normal:
Label l = new Label(0, 0, stringVal, numberAsTextFormat);
If you are using Apache POI, you would create a HSSFCellStyle, and then set it's data format like this:
HSSFCellStyle style = book.createCellStyle();
style.setDataFormat(BuiltInFormats.getBuiltInFormat("text"));

Answer 2

Many times when user enters number in cell which type(formatting) is text(string), spreadsheet software (openoffice or msoffice) changes it's formatting automatically. I am using apache poi and this is the way I wrote my code :
cell = row.getCell();
switch (cell.getCellType()) {
case HSSFCell.CELL_TYPE_STRING:
value = cell.getRichStringCellValue().getString();
break;
case HSSFCell.CELL_TYPE_NUMERIC:
// if cell fomratting or cell data is Numeric
// Read numeric value
// suppose user enters 0123456 (which is string), in numeric way it is read as 123456.0
// Now I want ot read string and I got number...Problem?????
//well this is the solution
cell.setCellType(Cell.CELL_TYPE_STRING); // set cell type string, so it will retain original value "0123456"
value = cell.getRichStringCellValue().getString(); // value read is now "0123456"
break;
default:
}