How to set JXL Character Encoding

JXL (Java Excel API) is a open source Java API which allows Java developers to read Excel spreadsheets and to generate Excel spreadsheets dynamically. In addition, it contains a mechanism which allows java applications to read in a spreadsheet, modify some cells and write out the new spreadsheet.

You can learn how to use it by the following link.

http://www.andykhan.com/jexcelapi/tutorial.html

At the default settings JXL is unable to read some special characters such like ®, ™, ©, etc.. which are used commonly.

This is the way how to overcome that issue.

Usually you can create the Workbook file as below.

Workbook workbook = Workbook.getWorkbook( new File(<path_to_excel_file>) );

At that case you can not read special characters like above mentioned. So this is the solution.

WorkbookSettings ws = new WorkbookSettings();

ws.setEncoding("CP1250");

Workbook workbook = Workbook.getWorkbook( new File(<path_to_excel_file>), ws );

Here CP1250 is a standard character encoding format. Like that you can specify what is the Character set you are going to use (ex: utf8, cp1250, etc...). So set the character set at the very beginning. Then you can read and write the characters which are defined under that character encoding system.

Cheers...!!