Zach Hunter's Busy Life

Another day and another little tidbit on using NPOI. I was doing tool mock-up at work today when I ran across a need for a copy row function. After searching high and low, I realized NPOI does not currently offer this capability. After looking around (Google, NPOI and POI threads) I decided to create my own helper function. I’m sure there might be a few things I missed in my routine since the library is a bit new to me, but after testing this against a bunch of different scenarios I’m pretty confident this will work for 99% of my needs and maybe a high percent of yours as well.

Here is the function in all it’s glory, I thought about modify the NPOI source but since I’m not sure where it’s going I figured I’d just add this in my own little NPOI.CustomHelpers class that I can use with my NPOI project.

        /// <summary>
        /// HSSFRow Copy Command
        ///
        /// Description:  Inserts a existing row into a new row, will automatically push down
        ///               any existing rows.  Copy is done cell by cell and supports, and the
        ///               command tries to copy all properties available (style, merged cells, values, etc...)
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="workbook">Workbook containing the worksheet that will be changed</param>
        /// <param name="worksheet">WorkSheet containing rows to be copied</param>
        /// <param name="sourceRowNum">Source Row Number</param>
        /// <param name="destinationRowNum">Destination Row Number</param>
        private void CopyRow(HSSFWorkbook workbook, HSSFSheet worksheet, int sourceRowNum, int destinationRowNum)
        {
            // Get the source / new row
            HSSFRow newRow = worksheet.GetRow(destinationRowNum);
            HSSFRow sourceRow = worksheet.GetRow(sourceRowNum);

            // If the row exist in destination, push down all rows by 1 else create a new row
            if (newRow != null)
            {
                worksheet.ShiftRows(destinationRowNum, worksheet.LastRowNum, 1);
            }
            else
            {
                newRow = worksheet.CreateRow(destinationRowNum);
            }

            // Loop through source columns to add to new row
            for (int i = 0; i < sourceRow.LastCellNum; i++)
            {
                // Grab a copy of the old/new cell
                HSSFCell oldCell = sourceRow.GetCell(i);
                HSSFCell newCell = newRow.CreateCell(i);

                // If the old cell is null jump to next cell
                if (oldCell == null)
                {
                    newCell = null;
                    continue;
                }

                // Copy style from old cell and apply to new cell
                HSSFCellStyle newCellStyle = workbook.CreateCellStyle();
                newCellStyle.CloneStyleFrom(oldCell.CellStyle); ;
                newCell.CellStyle = newCellStyle;

                // If there is a cell comment, copy
                if (newCell.CellComment != null) newCell.CellComment = oldCell.CellComment;

                // If there is a cell hyperlink, copy
                if (oldCell.Hyperlink != null) newCell.Hyperlink = oldCell.Hyperlink;

                // Set the cell data type
                newCell.SetCellType(oldCell.CellType);

                // Set the cell data value
                switch (oldCell.CellType)
                {
                    case HSSFCellType.BLANK:
                        newCell.SetCellValue(oldCell.StringCellValue);
                        break;
                    case HSSFCellType.BOOLEAN:
                        newCell.SetCellValue(oldCell.BooleanCellValue);
                        break;
                    case HSSFCellType.ERROR:
                        newCell.SetCellErrorValue(oldCell.ErrorCellValue);
                        break;
                    case HSSFCellType.FORMULA:
                        newCell.SetCellFormula(oldCell.CellFormula);
                        break;
                    case HSSFCellType.NUMERIC:
                        newCell.SetCellValue(oldCell.NumericCellValue);
                        break;
                    case HSSFCellType.STRING:
                        newCell.SetCellValue(oldCell.RichStringCellValue);
                        break;
                    case HSSFCellType.Unknown:
                        newCell.SetCellValue(oldCell.StringCellValue);
                        break;
                }
            }

            // If there are are any merged regions in the source row, copy to new row
            for (int i = 0; i < worksheet.NumMergedRegions; i++)
            {
                CellRangeAddress cellRangeAddress = worksheet.GetMergedRegion(i);
                if (cellRangeAddress.FirstRow == sourceRow.RowNum)
                {
                    CellRangeAddress newCellRangeAddress = new CellRangeAddress(newRow.RowNum,
                                                                                (newRow.RowNum +
                                                                                 (cellRangeAddress.FirstRow -
                                                                                  cellRangeAddress.LastRow)),
                                                                                cellRangeAddress.FirstColumn,
                                                                                cellRangeAddress.LastColumn);
                    worksheet.AddMergedRegion(newCellRangeAddress);
                }
            }

        }

The code comments above should give you a good idea of what I’m doing, if something doesn’t make sense just ask. The key things I wanted to make sure got copied were; Cell Style, Cell Value, Cell Type, Merged Cell Settings. In the end I noticed a few other things that I thought I might use in the future, so I included them as well. Here is an example of how to call to CopyRow along with a snapshot of the end result.

            // Grab my NPOI workbook memorystream
            HSSFWorkbook workbook = new HSSFWorkbook(memoryStream);

            // Grab my test worksheet
            HSSFSheet sheet = workbook.GetSheet("Sheet1");

            // Copy Excel Row 1 to Excel Row 3
            CopyRow(workbook, sheet, 0, 2);

            // Copy Excel Row 2 to Excel Row 4
            CopyRow(workbook, sheet, 1, 3);

NPOI - Copy Row Helper Function Test Results