Data validation fails when copy pasting data in excel made through apache poi

Question

I am making one .xls file using apache poi. I\'m including some data validations also as shown.

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Answer 1

Since apache poi cannot create macros, the only way is to have a template with the needed macro and creating the result from that template.

Example:

Have a template.xls with a worksheet Sheet1 and the macro from http://spreadsheetpage.com/index.php/tip/ensuring_that_data_validation_is_not_deleted/ located in the code module for that worksheet.

Edit 2020-09-03: The above link is dead now. But see https://superuser.com/questions/870926/restrict-paste-into-dropdown-cells-in-excel. There the used name is "DataValidationRange" instead of "ValidationRange". This would must be considered.

Then you could use following code:

import org.apache.poi.ss.usermodel.*;
import org.apache.poi.ss.util.*;
import org.apache.poi.openxml4j.exceptions.InvalidFormatException;

import org.apache.poi.ss.usermodel.DataValidation.ErrorStyle;

import org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.*;

import java.io.*;

class ReadAndWriteFromTemplateWithMacro {

 public static void main(String[] args) {
  try {

   String templateName = "template.xls";
   String resultName = "result.xls";
 
   String sheetName = "Sheet1";
 
   String[] strStatus = new String[]{"on", "off", "maybe"};

   FileInputStream template = new FileInputStream(templateName);
   Workbook wb = WorkbookFactory.create(template);   
   Sheet sheet = wb.getSheet(sheetName);

   if (sheet instanceof HSSFSheet) {

    CellRangeAddressList addressListStatus = new CellRangeAddressList(0, 65535, 9, 9);  
    DVConstraint dvConstraint = DVConstraint.createExplicitListConstraint(strStatus);
    DataValidation dataValidation = new HSSFDataValidation(addressListStatus, dvConstraint);
    dataValidation.setSuppressDropDownArrow(false);
    dataValidation.setErrorStyle(ErrorStyle.STOP);

    sheet.addValidationData(dataValidation);

    //create a named range for the data validation as described in http://spreadsheetpage.com/index.php/tip/ensuring_that_data_validation_is_not_deleted/
    Name name =  wb.createName();
    name.setNameName("ValidationRange");
    String reference = addressListStatus.getCellRangeAddress(0).formatAsString(sheetName, true);
    name.setRefersToFormula(reference);

   }

   FileOutputStream output = new FileOutputStream(resultName);
   wb.write(output);
   wb.close();

  } catch (InvalidFormatException ifex) {
  } catch (FileNotFoundException fnfex) {
  } catch (IOException ioex) {
  }
 }
}

Now the result.xls will contain that macro also. If macros are enabled, then this macro will prevent destroy data valitation by pasting over.