Features

Supported operation systems

Any OS that supports PHP (Windows - all versions, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Novell NetWare, OS/2, RISC OS, SGI IRIX 6.5.x, etc. - see supported platforms on www.php.net).

Supported Excel file versions

Excel 5.0 / Excel 7.0 (Excel 95) / Excel 8.0 (Excel 97) / Excel 9.0 (Excel 2000) / Excel 10.0 (Excel XP) / Excel 11.0 (Excel 2003)

Requirements

Only properly installed and configured PHP 5.0.1 or above is required. No additional extensions / libraries / software are required.

Distribution

ZIP-file, containing class source code and samples (inclusive sample that you can see at on-line demo section). Demo version available for download.

Retrieved data

Summary information

Creation date, author, OS used, title, etc. of any MS Office file (not only Excel).

Worksheets

Number of defined worksheets. Worksheet type - ordinary, chart, Visual Basic Module. Worksheet style - visible / hidden.

Columns and Rows

Number of defined columns and rows, width and height, grouping level, visibility.

Cell types

Integer, float, text (string), formula, hyperlink, logical (boolean), error (error code), empty, blank, merged cells areas.

Cell formats

Floating-point precision, percentage, date, time and others.

Cell styles

Font, string format, foreground and background colors, alignment, borders, rich-text strings (multiple font styles in one cell), asian phonetics, merged cells.

Images and shapes

Images in different formats, shapes that controls where and how an image must be shown.

Excel Explorer engine

Caching

Build-in caching to increase parsing speed. Useful for parsing big files with a lot of data. Also reduces disk access when Excel Explorer used in file-reading mode.

Operating modes

Multiple extraction modes - optimized for speed / memory usage, reading whole file into the memory or read data from the file on demand. The maximum size of Excel file that can be readed is not limited, but depends on available memory. Excel Explorer successfully tested on files above 800 megabytes.

Options

Controlling data extraction process by setting appropriate option flags.

API

Object-oriented. Well documented (including tutorial and samples).