Understanding How Cell Types Display Data

The cell type affects how the contents of the cell are displayed. The cell contains formatted and unformatted data.

The Text property contains the formatted data which is displayed in the cell; the Value property contains the unformatted data which is saved in the model. You can use the SheetView GetText and GetValue methods to obtain the contents of the cell, regardless of cell type. For more information about data methods and properties, refer to Placing and Retrieving Data.

The following table lists the editable cell types, and how each cell type works with the data, whether formatted (Text property) or unformatted (Value property).

Editable Cell Type	Sample Input	Resultant (Text) Formatted Data	Resultant (Value) Unformatted Data
CurrencyCellType	"$10,000.00"	"$10,000.00"	10000.00
DateTimeCellType	"10/29/2002"	"10/29/2002"	DateTime object of Tuesday, October 29, 2002 12:00:00 AM
DoubleCellType	"10000.00"	"10000.00"	10000.00
GeneralCellType	Any text	String of that data	Depends on whether DateTime, Boolean, or Text returns the DateTime object, the Boolean value, or the Text value
IntegerCellType	"12345"	"12345"	12345
PercentCellType	"15%"	"15%"	0.15
RegExpCellType (Regular Expression)	"123-45-6789"	"123-45-6789"	"123-45-6789"
TextCellType	Any text	String of that text	String of that text

The DateTime cell returns data in the format of the FormatString property setting. In this example, the format string is set to "F".

If the cell's Multiline property is set to true, you can include a line feed character to include a line break when setting text.

Numbers are converted to scientific notation if they are greater than 999,999,999,999,999 or less than -999,999,999,999,999. Low fraction numbers are also converted to scientific notation.

The following table lists the graphical cell types, and how each cell type works with the data, whether formatted (Text property) or unformatted (Value property).

Graphical Cell Type	Sample Input	Resultant (Text) Formatted Data	Resultant (Value) Unformatted Data
ButtonCellType	null	null	null
CheckBoxCellType	True (checked)	"True"	1
	False (unchecked)	"False"	0
	Not set; looks false	Empty string	Null
ComboBoxCellType	Any item	Text of selected item	Text of selected item or index of selected item
	No item selected	Empty string	Null
HyperLinkCellType	Any text	String of that text	"True" (for visited link) or "False" (for not visited)
ImageCellType
LabelCellType	Any text	String of that text	String of that text
ListBoxCellType	Any item selected	Text of the selected item	Text of or index of selected item
MultiColumnComboBoxCellType	Any item	Text of selected item	Text of selected item or index of selected item
RadioButtonListCellType	Any item selected	Text of the selected item	Text of or index of selected item
	No item selected	Empty string	Null