Problem with worksheets containing large numbers of links/URLs

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Max Riz

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Sep 24, 2009, 6:20:04 PM9/24/09
to Spreadsheet::WriteExcel
I've found an interesting problem/bug/interaction between the
WriteExcel module and Excel 2003 on WinXP.

If I have more than 65 thousand individual links in a given worksheet
(written with write_url), Excel fails to open the file.
If I have few enough links, excel goes into 'repair' mode and destroys
the link data.
If I have more than a certain amount, excel fails to open the file,
period.
The links can all be pointing to one place ( eg: http://www.google.com/
) or they can be 65,000 different links.

I can have as many links per WORKBOOK as I want, but having more than
N (where N is about 65k) links
per any given WORKSHEET causes problems.

This behavior can not be reproduced using OpenOffice.
This behavior may, or may not occur in other versions of Excel.

Other info:
WinXP + Excel 2003 for the reader.
Ubuntu 9.04, Perl 5.10.0, WriteExcel '2.25';


I have code, and sample worksheets that I can upload to my webserver
and provide links.


Thanks!

P.S. I'd troubleshoot further, but my knowledge of Excel and it's data
structures and limitations is not up to par.

jmcnamara

unread,
Oct 31, 2009, 2:47:29 AM10/31/09
to Spreadsheet::WriteExcel

On Sep 24, 10:20 pm, Max Riz <maxriz....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've found an interesting problem/bug/interaction between the
> WriteExcel module and Excel 2003 on WinXP.
>
> If I have more than 65 thousand individual links in a given worksheet
> (written with write_url), Excel fails to open the file.
> If I have few enough links, excel goes into 'repair' mode and destroys
> the link data.
> If I have more than a certain amount, excel fails to open the file,
> period.
> The links can all be pointing to one place ( eg:http://www.google.com/
> ) or they can be 65,000 different links.
>
> I can have as many links per WORKBOOK as I want, but having more than
> N (where N is about 65k) links
> per any given WORKSHEET causes problems.


Hi,

There seems to be some undocumented limit on the hyperlinks in Excel.
I was able to reproduce this using Excel itself.

I doesn't appear to be a limit to the number of hyperlinks but
probably to the amount of apace and hence memory that they take up.

I can't see a workaround for this.

John.
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