# How do you get formulas created by XLSX.jl to be read automatically in Excel?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-do-you-get-formulas-created-by-xlsx-jl-to-be-read-automatically-in-excel/75701>\
**Category:** Data\
**Tags:** xlsx\
**Created:** [February 3, 2022, 6:01am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-do-you-get-formulas-created-by-xlsx-jl-to-be-read-automatically-in-excel/75701 "2022-02-03T06:01:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![scotts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ac8455/32.png) [@scotts](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/scotts)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2022, 6:01am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-do-you-get-formulas-created-by-xlsx-jl-to-be-read-automatically-in-excel/75701/1 "2022-02-03T06:01:01Z")

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I’m making Excel files with XLSX.jl.

Everything works as it should, however, I’ve found when I create formulas for the spreadsheet they just show up as text in Excel.

I can manually get them to register and process if I click Enter in the formula box in Excel, however that defeats the point. I want Excel to read them as formulas without me going in and hitting enter in every single cell.

Edit: I found a hack that works. Go to find-replace in excel and select some text common to the formulas (eg “)” ) and replace it with the exact same character. Still requires some manual intervention though and I have thousands of files, so not really good enough ☹

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**Author:** ![lawless-m](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/lawless-m/32/30869_2.png) [@lawless-m](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/lawless-m)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2022, 7:00am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-do-you-get-formulas-created-by-xlsx-jl-to-be-read-automatically-in-excel/75701/2 "2022-02-03T07:00:47Z")

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I can’t help you with XLSX.jl but I do have a wrapper around Python’s XlsxWriter.

[https://github.com/lawless-m/XlsxWriter.jl](https://github.com/lawless-m/XlsxWriter.jl)

I wrote it a few years ago, although it does work with 1.7.

It is not 100% complete with the Python version - that’s been updated and extended in the meantime.

It’s also got a few sharp edges.

And XlxsWriter doesn’t support _reading_ Excel files, just writing. So that might be a problem for you.

I have used XlxsWriter a lot in Python it is very good. I don’t have a personal need to update my wrapper so sorry about that.

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**Author:** ![scotts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ac8455/32.png) [@scotts](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/scotts)\
**Post date:** [February 4, 2022, 12:19pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-do-you-get-formulas-created-by-xlsx-jl-to-be-read-automatically-in-excel/75701/3 "2022-02-04T12:19:30Z")

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Thanks. XlsxWriter.jl appears to be the only way in Julia to put images in spreadsheets, so I want to use it, but it’s lack of read support sent me back to XLSX.jl

XLSX.jl is doing everything else with the help of openpyxl. I haven’t tried it with other formulas the issue for me was with the =HYPERLINK() formula and I managed to solve it with openpyxl .hyperlink function rather than a string.

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**Author:** ![TimG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/82dd89/32.png) [@TimG](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/TimG)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2026, 5:46pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-do-you-get-formulas-created-by-xlsx-jl-to-be-read-automatically-in-excel/75701/4 "2026-08-29T17:46:34Z")

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XLSX.jl now offers `setFormula()` to write native Excel formulas. It also now supports adding images, too.