Working with Cell Notation

Xlsxwriter.lua supports two forms of notation to designate the position of cells: Row-column notation and A1 notation.

Row-column notation uses a zero based index for both row and column while A1 notation uses the standard Excel alphanumeric sequence of column letter and 1-based row. For example:

 (0, 0)     -- Row-column notation.
 ("A1")     -- The same cell in A1 notation.

 (6, 2)     -- Row-column notation.
 ("C7")     -- The same cell in A1 notation.

Row-column notation is useful if you are referring to cells programmatically:

 for row = 0, 5 do
     worksheet:write(row, 0, "Hello")
 end

A1 notation is useful for setting up a worksheet manually and for working with formulas:

 worksheet:write("H1", 200)
 worksheet:write("H2", "=H1+1")

In general when using the xlsxwriter module you can use A1 notation anywhere you can use row-column notation.

Relative and Absolute cell references

When dealing with Excel cell references it is important to distinguish between relative and absolute cell references in Excel.

Relative cell references change when they are copied while Absolute references maintain fixed row and/or column references. In Excel absolute references are prefixed by the dollar symbol as shown below:

 A1   -- Column and row are relative.
 $A1  -- Column is absolute and row is relative.
 A$1  -- Column is relative and row is absolute.
 $A$1 -- Column and row are absolute.

See the Microsoft Office documentation for more information on relative and absolute references.

Cell Utility Functions

The xlsxwriter.utility module contains several helper functions for dealing with A1 notation. These functions can be imported and used as follows:

 local Utility = require "xlsxwriter.utility"

 cell = Utilty.rowcol_to_cell(1, 2) --> C2

The available functions are shown below.

rowcol_to_cell()

The rowcol_to_cell() function converts a zero indexed row and column cell values to an A1 style string:

 cell = Utilty.rowcol_to_cell(0, 0) --> A1
 cell = Utilty.rowcol_to_cell(0, 1) --> B1
 cell = Utilty.rowcol_to_cell(1, 0) --> A2

rowcol_to_cell_abs()

The rowcol_to_cell_abs() function is like the rowcol_to_cell_abs() function but the optional parameters row_abs and col_abs can be used to indicate that the row or column is absolute:

 str = Utilty.rowcol_to_cell_abs(0, 0, false, true) --> $A1
 str = Utilty.rowcol_to_cell_abs(0, 0, true       ) --> A$1
 str = Utilty.rowcol_to_cell_abs(0, 0, true,  true) --> $A$1

cell_to_rowcol()

The cell_to_rowcol() function converts an Excel cell reference in A1 notation to a zero based row and column. The function will also handle Excel"s absolute cell notation:

 row, col = Utilty.cell_to_rowcol("A1")   --> (0, 0)
 row, col = Utilty.cell_to_rowcol("B1")   --> (0, 1)
 row, col = Utilty.cell_to_rowcol("C2")   --> (1, 2)
 row, col = Utilty.cell_to_rowcol("$C2")  --> (1, 2)
 row, col = Utilty.cell_to_rowcol("C$2")  --> (1, 2)
 row, col = Utilty.cell_to_rowcol("$C$2") --> (1, 2)

col_to_name()

The col_to_name() converts a zero based column reference to a string:

 column = Utilty.col_to_name(0)   --> A
 column = Utilty.col_to_name(1)   --> B
 column = Utilty.col_to_name(702) --> AAA

The optional parameter col_abs can be used to indicate if the column is absolute:

 column = Utilty.col_to_name(0, false) --> A
 column = Utilty.col_to_name(0, true)  --> $A
 column = Utilty.col_to_name(1, true)  --> $B

range()

The range() function converts zero based row and column cell references to an A1:B1 style range string:

 cell_range = Utilty.range(0, 0, 9, 0) --> A1:A10
 cell_range = Utilty.range(1, 2, 8, 2) --> C2:C9
 cell_range = Utilty.range(0, 0, 3, 4) --> A1:E4

range_abs()

The range_abs() function converts zero based row and column cell references to an absolute $A$1:$B$1 style range string:

 cell_range = Utilty.range_abs(0, 0, 9, 0) --> $A$1:$A$10
 cell_range = Utilty.range_abs(1, 2, 8, 2) --> $C$2:$C$9
 cell_range = Utilty.range_abs(0, 0, 3, 4) --> $A$1:$E$4

Last updated: 3 years ago | Edit on GitHub