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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

writexl 1.5.4.9000

New features

  • xl_cell_general() writes a cell with any combination of value, formula, hyperlink, format and comment, and supports mixed-type columns and recycling. xl_formula() and xl_hyperlink() now return xl_cell_general objects and remain backward compatible; xl_hyperlink() writes real URL hyperlinks, so display text and tooltips are available.

  • Cell, worksheet, and workbook formatting is now supported. xl_format() and the group constructors xl_font(), xl_fill(), xl_border(), xl_align(), xl_num_format() and xl_protection() build reusable format objects that combine with +; xl_sheet() adds worksheet options (column and row geometry, frozen panes, gridlines, tab color, zoom, automatic column widths, autofilters, protection); xl_workbook() and xl_properties() set document metadata and the workbook-wide formatting defaults.

  • Cell comments (notes) via xl_cell_general(comment =) and xl_comment().

  • Array and dynamic array formulas via xl_cell_general(array =, dynamic =, array_range =).

  • Rich strings — one cell whose text is split into differently formatted runs — via xl_rich_string() and xl_rich_run().

  • Page setup and printing via xl_sheet(page = xl_page_setup(...)): orientation, paper size, margins, scaling and fit-to-pages, centring, headers and footers, print area, repeating heading rows/columns, manual page breaks, and the print options.

  • Sheet tabs and the opening view via xl_sheet(): which tab is active, selected, hidden or leftmost; the selected cell and scroll position; hiding zero values; right-to-left column order; and split panes alongside the existing frozen panes. The workbook-wide visibility rules (only one active sheet, no hidden-and-active sheet, at least one visible sheet) are checked before writing, naming the sheet at fault.

  • Data validation via xl_sheet(validation = xl_validation(...)): dropdown lists, numeric, date, time and text-length bounds, and custom formulas, with the input and error messages Excel shows (#43).

  • Conditional formatting via xl_sheet(conditional = ...), in four flavours: xl_cond_cell() for a rule paired with a format, xl_cond_scale() for two- and three-colour scales, xl_cond_bar() for data bars and xl_cond_icons() for Excel’s built-in icon sets.

  • Autofilter criteria via xl_sheet(filter = xl_filter(...)). Excel does not apply a filter when a file is opened, so xl_filter() also hides the rows the criteria exclude; without that the sheet looks filtered but shows every row. writexl reproduces Excel’s matching rules, which were measured rather than assumed. An exact value or a list matches the text a cell displays, so it matches the number 10 and the string "10" alike; every other criteria compares by type, and a wildcard turns "==" into one of those. Text matching is case-insensitive, * and ? are wildcards, and blank covers an empty cell as well as an empty string. Mixed-type columns made with xl_cell_general() are matched cell by cell.

  • Images via xl_sheet(image = xl_image(...)), floating over the cells or, with embed = TRUE, placed inside one. The image may be a file path, a raw vector, or an in-memory picture — a raster, colour matrix, RGB array or nativeRaster — so a plot never has to touch the disk. Scale, offset, position, alt text and a hyperlink are all supported, and the format is read from the file’s own bytes rather than its extension. Also xl_sheet(background =) for a tiled screen watermark, and images in printed headers and footers via xl_page_setup(header_image =, footer_image =).

    Two combinations are refused, because libxlsxwriter miscounts them and Excel repairs the file: an embedded image alongside any other image, and a header/footer or background image on a sheet before one with a floating image. Both errors name the sheets and the arrangement that works.

  • Worksheet tables via xl_sheet(table = xl_table(...)): a named, styled range with banded rows, a filter dropdown, an optional total row, and per-column headers, formats and formulas from xl_table_column(). Column headers default to the data frame’s column names, which is what keeps the table definition and the header cells in agreement — Excel refuses a file where they differ. Table names are made unique across the workbook. Any table turns off the memory-efficient row-streaming mode, which libxlsxwriter does not support alongside tables.

  • xl_filter_keep() exposes the matching rule on its own: given a data frame and one or more xl_filter()s, it returns which rows Excel would leave visible, without writing anything. xl_sheet(filter =) uses it to decide what to hide, so the two cannot disagree.

  • Column widths and row heights may be given in pixels — xl_col_spec(width_pixels =) and xl_row_spec(height_pixels =) — as well as in Excel’s character units and points.

  • Outline display via xl_sheet(outline = xl_outline(...)): whether the grouping symbols are shown, and which side of the detail rows and columns the summary sits on. Grouping itself still comes from level.

  • Error indicators can be turned off with xl_sheet(ignore_errors =), for example list(number_stored_as_text = "A2:A99") to stop Excel flagging numbers deliberately stored as text.

  • Merged cells via xl_sheet(merge = xl_merge(...)). A merged range holds one value, so xl_merge() carries its own text; merging over cells the data frame filled keeps only the merged text, as it does in Excel.

  • xl_properties(hyperlink_format = NULL) writes hyperlinks with no styling at all, which was previously impossible.

  • Custom document properties may now be Date or POSIXct, and are written as real datetime properties rather than as text.

  • Columns of a type writexl cannot represent (complex, raw, a bare list column) now raise an error naming the column, rather than warning and leaving the cells empty.

  • write_xlsx() now errors informatively when a data frame exceeds the xlsx column limit (16384) or row limit (1048576).

  • Bundled libxlsxwriter updated to 1.2.4.

  • See the “Formatting and workbook properties” and “Writing Special Cell Types” vignettes.

Bug fixes

  • Fix installation on systems without GNU make, by replacing a GNU-specific pattern rule in src/Makevars with a portable static library recipe (#97).

  • Fix a strcpy() buffer overflow in the internal C_set_tempdir(); a tempdir path of 2048 bytes or more now errors informatively.

  • POSIXct columns are no longer silently converted to UTC. When every datetime in the workbook shares one time zone, the zone is dropped and local wall-clock time is written; when they differ, all are converted to UTC with a warning. Code that relied on always getting the UTC instant will see shifted values. See the formatting vignette.

  • Date values before 1900-03-01 were written one day too late, because the Date writer did not compensate for Excel’s phantom 1900-02-29. Date and POSIXct now write identical serial numbers.

  • Sheet names are repaired properly: they are truncated to a genuine 31 characters (previously 29, despite the warning saying 31), characters Excel forbids ([ ] : * ? / \) are replaced, edge apostrophes are stripped, and duplicates created by either repair are resolved. A sheet named "2024/Q1" previously produced a file Excel refused to open.

writexl 1.5.4

CRAN release: 2025-04-15

  • Fix LTO build for bundled libxlsxwriter

writexl 1.5.3

CRAN release: 2025-04-06

  • write_xlsx() now gives a warning if a column is of unsupported type
  • Fix crash in write_xlsx() for corrupted data frames

writexl 1.5.2

CRAN release: 2025-03-17

  • Fix parallel make; cleanup after build

writexl 1.5.0

CRAN release: 2024-02-09

  • Update libxlsxwriter from b0c76b33

writexl 1.4.2

CRAN release: 2023-01-06

  • Bugfix for NA timestamps

writexl 1.4.1

CRAN release: 2022-10-18

  • Fix strict-prototypes warnings

writexl 1.4.0

CRAN release: 2021-04-20

  • Update libxlsxwriter to 1.0.3

writexl 1.3.1

CRAN release: 2020-08-26

  • Fix a unit test in R-devel for timezone attribute comparisons

writexl 1.3

CRAN release: 2020-05-05

  • write_xlsx() gains option use_zip64 for 4GB+ file support
  • libxlsxwriter error messages are printed to REprintf instead of fprintf
  • Handle overly long or duplicate sheet names
  • The help assistant only appears once per session

writexl 1.2

CRAN release: 2019-11-27

writexl 1.1

CRAN release: 2018-12-02

  • Update bundled libxlsxwriter 0.8.4
  • Do not write blank xlsx strings for NA and "" character values
  • Coerce bit64 vectors to double with warning (xlsx does not have int64)

writexl 1.0

CRAN release: 2018-05-10

  • Save R Date types as proper datetime strings
  • Update vendored libxlsxwriter to 0.7.6

writexl 0.2

CRAN release: 2017-09-06

  • Add support for lists in write_xlsx() to create xlsx with multiple sheets
  • Automatically coerce columns of type Date and hms to strings

writexl 0.1

CRAN release: 2017-08-30

  • Initial CRAN release with clippy