RE: Update a Cell in a MS EXCEL Worksheet

Please explain what you mean when you say the cell is define as general. I
think you mean that its display format is general. If so, then that means
only that Excel will display it in its choice of formats; it has nothing
(little) to do with the content itself.

When retrieving values from cells, I have found it useful to always always
always obtain the cell type first and then retrieve the data according to
cell type. That cannot go wrong! What you *believe* is in the cells has
little to do with how Excel handles the content. Numbers look like strings
look like numbers...

Regards,
Dennis Lovelady
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dennislovelady
--
"I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make
it short."
-- Blaise Pascal
.

In the worksheet I am working with, column 0 is formatted as a General
type field.
I am attempting to use the following code to retreive the contents of
that column:
Item  = %Trim(String_getBytes(HSSFCell_getStringCellValue(Cell)));
Where Item is a character field.
I am receiving the following error:
Message . . . . :   Java exception received when calling Java
method.


Cause . . . . . :   RPG procedure PROCESSSHE in program
QGPL/XL_UPDTEST
  received Java exception "java.lang.NumberFormatException: You cannot
get a
  string value from a numeric cell" when calling method
"getStringCellValue"
  with signature "()Ljava.lang.String;" in
class

"org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.HSSFCell".

Since this is defined as General, and has both numeric and character
data in it, I do not understand why I am receiving this error.