While researching another problem, I noticed that font color was not working as expected for Xls Conditional Formats, at least not when a "non-standard" color is used. In such cases, the color might wind up being rendered as black. The reason is as follows. Xls Writer includes a color palette which is dynamically generated from the (non-Conditional) styles used in the workbook. Any colors used in the workbook are indexes to this dynamic palette. However, Conditional colors use a static palette found in class ColorMap to determine the index, so the determination of index will often not find a match, and, if a match is found, it is not necessarily correct. (Also, the ColorMap method was case-sensitive and needs to be insensitive.) In order to correct this, the `addColor` method in Xls Writer Workbook needs to be accessible to the Conditional logic which is found in Xls Writer Worksheet. This is accomplished by passing the Workbook in the Worksheet's constructor, and changing the method to public, and changing Conditional Font to use this method rather than ColorMap. The logic for Conditional Fill colors is similarly changed. Although Xls Conditional Fill has appeared to just not work, I was finally able to figure out the problem. Excel Xls Conditional Fill with fill type Solid requires that the fill color be specified as startColor, and that endColor be omitted. Our conditional samples used endColor, and are now changed to use startColor instead; the same is true for our online documentation, and for some tests. Xlsx continues to work as expected, and now Xls does at least some of the time. If the condition is one that Excel Xls does not recognize (e.g. cell contains), it will, of course, not work. A surprising situation that also doesn't work is the use of ISODD or ISEVEN in formulas. Those are "add-in functions" which are handled differently than other functions, and I'm not sure how to support them. I will document this in issue #3403. Samples 08_Conditional_Formatting(_2) had produced corrupt Xls versions. This turned out to be because the code was using hash codes to avoid having to write out duplicate conditionals; this is often a good idea, but not in this case. Allowing the duplicates fixes the corruption problem. Conditional Border colors also ought to figure in this change, but the current code does not support Border colors, and I have not yet been able to figure out how to implement it (BIFF format can be very messy to figure out). With this change, I could delete ColorMap altogether. However, it is a public class with a static public method, so maybe someone is using it for a purpose I'm not familiar with. I will just deprecate it.
PhpSpreadsheet
PhpSpreadsheet is a library written in pure PHP and offers a set of classes that allow you to read and write various spreadsheet file formats such as Excel and LibreOffice Calc.
Installation
See the install instructions.
Documentation
Read more about it, including install instructions, in the official documentation. Or check out the API documentation.
Please ask your support questions on StackOverflow, or have a quick chat on Gitter.
Patreon
I am now running a Patreon to support the work that I do on PhpSpreadsheet.
Supporters will receive access to articles about working with PhpSpreadsheet, and how to use some of its more advanced features.
Posts already available to Patreon supporters:
- The Dating Game
- A look at how MS Excel (and PhpSpreadsheet) handle date and time values.
- Looping the Loop
- Advice on Iterating through the rows and cells in a worksheet.
And for Patrons at levels actively using PhpSpreadsheet:
- Behind the Mask
- A look at Number Format Masks.
The Next Article (currently Work in Progress):
- Formula for Success
- How to debug formulae that don't produce the expected result.
My aim is to post at least one article each month, taking a detailed look at some feature of MS Excel and how to use that feature in PhpSpreadsheet, or on how to perform different activities in PhpSpreadsheet.
Planned posts for the future include topics like:
- Tables
- Structured References
- AutoFiltering
- Array Formulae
- Conditional Formatting
- Data Validation
- Value Binders
- Images
- Charts
After a period of six months exclusive to Patreon supporters, articles will be incorporated into the public documentation for the library.
PHPExcel vs PhpSpreadsheet ?
PhpSpreadsheet is the next version of PHPExcel. It breaks compatibility to dramatically improve the code base quality (namespaces, PSR compliance, use of latest PHP language features, etc.).
Because all efforts have shifted to PhpSpreadsheet, PHPExcel will no longer be maintained. All contributions for PHPExcel, patches and new features, should target PhpSpreadsheet master branch.
Do you need to migrate? There is an automated tool for that.
License
PhpSpreadsheet is licensed under MIT.

