Formatting problem

[JustinGates]

I am having a problem with getting formatting. Users are uploading an excel
spreadsheet, which I am trying to parse and insert the data into my database.
I have tried about a million different ways of doing this including: COM,
Apache POI, and custom excel2query tag. I managed to get the data all of these
different ways, but I don't get any of the formatting that were in the cells.
I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure this out. Any suggestions?

[sdwebguy99]

What kind of formatting are you looking to maintain? Have you ruled out the
database fields as the cause of the loss or change of formatting? Could you
post a sample Excel file and code that we could do some testing against?

[JustinGates]

I am trying to maintain formatting like bold, italics, and underline. I
haven't inserted the data into the database yet. I have just been printing it
out on a web page to view it. I have also had some trouble getting individual
cell data via COM object. I have been reading through the VB help for Excel to
find the objects and methods. Some of the objects like a range have properties
that take parameters. For instance, objWorksheet.UsedRange.Cells(1,1).Value.
Cells(1,1) is actually a property not a method. When I try to use it I get
an error that the method was not found. I have also used a tag that I found on
the web excel2query. Its a great tag that is really easy to use, but it also
does not give you formatting. I'm working with one of my co-workers now with
the POI to see if we can get it. As far as the spreadsheet goes, it is a very
simple spreadsheet with three columns. There are no formulas, just text with
the occasional bold, italic and underline.

[JustinGates]

After looking ove the APache POI Documentation I came across this: Rich Text
HSSF does not support rich text cells. Rich text cells are cells that have
multiple fonts and styles in the once cell. Any attempt to read a spreadsheet
that has rich text cells will throw an exception. This feature may be supported
in the future but it is not currently planned. Patches are welcome. I guess
I'm right back at the drawing board where I started. I was going to use XML,
but only Excel 2003 and maybe 2002 support XML and I don't want to be limited
to that software because my clients don't all have that version. I'm pretty
much open to any option now.