Exception reading XLSB File Apache POI java.io.CharConversionException

Question

Im developing a Java aplication that reads an excel xlsb file using Apache POI, but I got an exception while reading it, my code is as follows:

import java.i         


        

Answer 1

Apache POI doesn't support the .xlsb file format for anything other than text extraction. Apache POI will happily provide full read or write support .xls files (via HSSF) and .xlsx files (via XSSF), or both (via the common SS UserModel interface).

However, the .xlsb format is not supported for generatl operations - it's a very odd hybrid between the two, and the large amount of work involved has meant no-one has been willing to volunteer/sponsor the work required.

What Apache POI does offer for .xlsb, as of Apache POI 3.15 beta3 / 3.16, is a text extractor for .xlsb files - XSSFBEventBasedExcelExtractor. You can use that to get the text out of your file, or with a few tweaks convert it to something like CSV

For full read/write support, you'll need to convert your file to either .xls (if it doesn't have very large numbers of rows/columns), or .xlsx (if it does). If you're really really keen to help though, you could review the source code for XSSFBEventBasedExcelExtractor, then have a go at contributing patches to add full support to POI for it!

(Additionally, I think from the exception that your particular .xlsb file is partly corrupt, but even if it wasn't it still wouldn't be supported by Apache POI for anything other than text extraction, sorry)