Printing an empty cell?

[Ethan-Chew]

Is there a way to print an empty cell? After doing,
let test = worksheet.cells(atRows: [2]) .compactMap { $0.stringValue(sharedStrings) }
Empty cells don't return as "" but as nil, also removing it as Compact Map was used.

Thanks for the help

[MaxDesiatov]

Hi @Ethan-Chew, there's a difference here between an empty cell and absence of a cell. If you'd like to know whether a cell contains a shared string value in this worksheet, you'll have to use map in this specific case. You can also read cell's value to get its inline value. Otherwise, if a cell is not present in worksheet's data?.rows arrays, then it's not present in the worksheet. Does that resolve your issue?

[Ethan-Chew]

In my case, it is an empty cell, however, after running Compact Map, it returns as nil instead of "". I grabbed the whole row, and there is 1 empty cell, however, for that cell itself, it returns as nil.

[MaxDesiatov]

I underestand that, but unfortunately the only way for us to distinguish an empty string in a cell "" and absence of the cell is to look into what's stored in the file. If you spreadsheet editor or exporter (Excel most of the time) displays the cell as empty, but doesn't write it to the file, I don't think there's anything we can do in the library. The information about the cell containing an empty string is lost if that cell wasn't written to the file in the first place. 😞

[Ethan-Chew]

Ah.. Ok. I have found a temporary solution for anyone who reads this.. Just replace all empty cells with some string like "Empty Cell"