You could also just generate a CSV file. That works fine in lots of versions of Excel. :)
There are a lot of problems i used to face when creating CSV/TDF files for Excel.
I first encountered this problem dealing with leading zeros and stock numbers that looked like 1E123.
Below find a csv file that documents some of them.
="--------------------"
="leading equals fixes these"
"something excell may think as a date"
,="2012-12-12"
,"2012-12-12"
,="2/4"
,"2/4"
"something excell may think is a number"
,="1e123"
,"1e123"
"leading zeros"
,="00001"
,"00001"
"leading equals"
,="=x"
,"=x"
"there are more that ive forgotten"
="--------------------"
="leading equals busts these"
"commas in string"
,"created,2016-06-19-03-02-26"
,="created,2016-06-19-03-02-26"
"long strings"
,"|001-----0|010-----0|020-----0|030-----0|040-----0|050-----0|060----
+-0|070-----0|080-----0|090-----0|101-----0|110-----0|120-----0|130---
+--0|140-----0|150-----0|160-----0|170-----0|180-----0|190-----0|201--
+---0|210-----0|220-----0|230-----0|240-----0|250-----0|260-----0|270-
+----0|280-----0|290-----0"
,="|001-----0|010-----0|020-----0|030-----0|040-----0|050-----0|060---
+--0|070-----0|080-----0|090-----0|101-----0|110-----0|120-----0|130--
+---0|140-----0|150-----0|160-----0|170-----0|180-----0|190-----0|201-
+----0|210-----0|220-----0|230-----0|240-----0|250-----0|260-----0|270
+-----0|280-----0|290-----0"
"so everthing is output as =""..."" that does not have a comma or is l
+ong"
"you can still perform arithmatic on a =""..."" when it is a number"
As you can see i used what i called the "literal function" (="...") to deal with many of them.
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