Diff failed: Failed to read as excel file:

[toobaz]

As reported in a comment to this answer, ExcelCompare is failing on a regular xls file with the following error message:

Diff failed: Failed to read as excel file: problema.xls

The file opens regularly in LibreOffice, and is parsed fine by the xlrd python library.

Unfortunately this is not a file I can post publicly, and if I open it (with LibreOffice) and "Save as" a new file the problem already disappears (so I cannot censor sensitive parts). I have no access to the computer where the file was produced.

Feel free to let me know if there is something I can do to debug the issue. This is what the command "file" says of this file:

problema.xls: Composite Document File V2 Document, Little Endian, Os: Windows, Version 4.10, Code page: 1252, Last Saved Time/Date: Thu Jan  8 19:06:04 2015

(and this is what it says after resaving with LibreOffice:

problema2.xls: Composite Document File V2 Document, Little Endian, Os: Windows, Version 1.0, Code page: -535, Revision Number: 0, Last Saved Time/Date: Thu Jan  8 19:06:04 2015

)

[na-ka-na]

Thanks for reporting. Without the file it'll be pretty hard to debug. But if you think the tool will be useful to you - I can try to create a debug binary - which will print out useful messages to debug and hopefully I can fix the issue looking at those. Lemme know if you think this is something worth doing.

[toobaz]

I actually don't need the program any more - my need for Excel diffing was very short lived. That said, I can test a debug binary if you think the resulting messages would be valuable to you.

[na-ka-na]

I added a --debug flag, it will generate a stack trace, can you paste that? run as: excel_cmp --debug . download release here: https://github.com/na-ka-na/ExcelCompare/releases/download/0.5.1/ExcelCompare-0.5.1.zip

[toobaz]

Here it is:

    pietro@debiousci:~/cancellami/qv$ excel_cmp --debug problema.xls problema.xls 
    java.lang.RuntimeException: Failed to read as excel file: problema.xls
        at com.ka.spreadsheet.diff.SpreadSheetDiffer.loadSpreadSheet(SpreadSheetDiffer.java:256)
        at com.ka.spreadsheet.diff.SpreadSheetDiffer.doDiff(SpreadSheetDiffer.java:132)
        at com.ka.spreadsheet.diff.SpreadSheetDiffer.doDiff(SpreadSheetDiffer.java:102)
        at com.ka.spreadsheet.diff.SpreadSheetDiffer.main(SpreadSheetDiffer.java:90)
    Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unexpected missing row when some rows already present
        at org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.HSSFSheet.setPropertiesFromSheet(HSSFSheet.java:212)
        at org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.HSSFSheet.<init>(HSSFSheet.java:137)
        at org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.HSSFWorkbook.<init>(HSSFWorkbook.java:338)
        at org.apache.poi.ss.usermodel.WorkbookFactory.create(WorkbookFactory.java:115)
        at org.apache.poi.ss.usermodel.WorkbookFactory.create(WorkbookFactory.java:206)
        at org.apache.poi.ss.usermodel.WorkbookFactory.create(WorkbookFactory.java:188)
        at com.ka.spreadsheet.diff.SpreadSheetDiffer.loadSpreadSheet(SpreadSheetDiffer.java:241)
        ... 3 more