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Known Issues and Bugs

This section lists known issues and bugs and gives some information on how to submit bug reports.

"Content is Unreadable. Open and Repair"

Very, very occasionally you may see an Excel warning when opening an XlsxWriter file like:

Excel could not open file.xlsx because some content is unreadable. Do you want to open and repair this workbook.

This ominous sounding message is Excel's default warning for any validation error in the XML used for the components of the XLSX file.

If you encounter an issue like this you should open an issue on GitHub with a program to replicate the issue (see below) or send one of the failing output files to the author.

"Exception caught in workbook destructor. Explicit close() may be required"

The following exception, or similar, can occur if the close method isn't used at the end of the program:

Exception Exception: Exception('Exception caught in workbook destructor.
Explicit close() may be required for workbook.',)
in <bound method Workbook.__del__ of <xlsxwriter.workbook.Workbookobject
at 0x103297d50>>

Note, it is possible that this exception will also be raised as part of another exception that occurs during workbook destruction. In either case ensure that there is an explicit workbook.close() in the program.

Formulas displayed as #NAME? until edited

Excel 2010 and 2013 added functions which weren't defined in the original file specification. These functions are referred to as future functions. Examples of these functions are ACOT, CHISQ.DIST.RT , CONFIDENCE.NORM, STDEV.P, STDEV.S and WORKDAY.INTL. The full list is given in the MS XLSX extensions documentation on future functions.

When written using write_formula() these functions need to be fully qualified with the _xlfn. prefix as they are shown in the MS XLSX documentation link above. For example:

worksheet.write_formula('A1', '=_xlfn.STDEV.S(B1:B10)')

Formula results displaying as zero in non-Excel applications

Due to wide range of possible formulas and interdependencies between them XlsxWriter doesn't, and realistically cannot, calculate the result of a formula when it is written to an XLSX file. Instead, it stores the value 0 as the formula result. It then sets a global flag in the XLSX file to say that all formulas and functions should be recalculated when the file is opened.

This is the method recommended in the Excel documentation and in general it works fine with spreadsheet applications. However, applications that don't have a facility to calculate formulas, such as Excel Viewer, or several mobile applications, will only display the 0 results.

If required, it is also possible to specify the calculated result of the formula using the optional value parameter in write_formula():

worksheet.write_formula('A1', '=2+2', num_format, 4)

Strings aren't displayed in Apple Numbers in 'constant_memory' mode

In Workbook 'constant_memory' mode XlsxWriter uses an optimization where cell strings aren't stored in an Excel structure call "shared strings" and instead are written "in-line".

This is a documented Excel feature that is supported by most spreadsheet applications. One known exception is Apple Numbers for Mac where the string data isn't displayed.

Images not displayed correctly in Excel 2001 for Mac and non-Excel applications

Images inserted into worksheets via insert_image may not display correctly in Excel 2011 for Mac and non-Excel applications such as OpenOffice and LibreOffice. Specifically the images may looked stretched or squashed.

This is not specifically an XlsxWriter issue. It also occurs with files created in Excel 2007 and Excel 2010.

Charts series created from Worksheet Tables cannot have user defined names

In Excel, charts created from Worksheet Tables <tables> have a limitation where the data series name, if specifed, must refer to a cell within the table.

To workaround this Excel limitation you can specify a user defined name in the table and refer to that from the chart. See charts_from_tables.

Reporting Bugs

Here are some tips on reporting bugs in XlsxWriter.

Upgrade to the latest version of the module

The bug you are reporting may already be fixed in the latest version of the module. You can check which version of XlsxWriter that you are using as follows:

python -c 'import xlsxwriter; print(xlsxwriter.__version__)'

Check the changes section to see what has changed in the latest versions.

Read the documentation

Read or search the XlsxWriter documentation to see if the issue you are encountering is already explained.

Look at the example programs

There are many examples in the distribution. Try to identify an example program that corresponds to your query and adapt it to use as a bug report.

Use the official XlsxWriter Issue tracker on GitHub

The official XlsxWriter Issue tracker is on GitHub.

Pointers for submitting a bug report

  1. Describe the problem as clearly and as concisely as possible.
  2. Include a sample program. This is probably the most important step. It is generally easier to describe a problem in code than in written prose.
  3. The sample program should be as small as possible to demonstrate the problem. Don't copy and paste large non-relevant sections of your program.

A sample bug report is shown below. This format helps to analyze and respond to the bug report more quickly.

Issue with SOMETHING

I am using XlsxWriter to do SOMETHING but it appears to do SOMETHING ELSE.

I am using Python version X.Y.Z and XlsxWriter x.y.z.

Here is some code that demonstrates the problem:

import xlsxwriter

workbook = xlsxwriter.Workbook('hello.xlsx')
worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet()

worksheet.write('A1', 'Hello world')

workbook.close()

See also how How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example from StackOverflow.