Tablora · Library
Keep angle brackets and ampersands inside a cell
Cell text such as A&B <sample> contains characters that XML reserves. The text-safe XLSX escapes them in the file and shows the original text.
Characters the workbook format reserves
An XLSX file is a ZIP package of XML documents, and XML gives special meaning to the ampersand, the angle brackets and quotation marks. A product note like A&B <sample> cannot be written into the sheet as it stands, or the file would be damaged and the spreadsheet would refuse to open it or offer to repair it.
The text-safe converter escapes those characters inside the package. When the spreadsheet opens the file, the cell shows the same characters you entered. Nothing in the cell becomes an HTML element, an XML tag or a link.
A&B <sample> from paste to cell
The page example has one column named note and the value A&B <sample>. The expected cell text in the workbook is A&B <sample>, stored as an explicit text cell rather than a formula or a number. In the preview on this page the value is also shown as plain text, so the angle brackets appear as characters, not as markup.
Quotation marks and apostrophes in a note are escaped the same way inside the file and also arrive unchanged.
Steps for text that contains markup
- Enter the text with the ampersands and brackets in Table text and choose how its fields are separated under Delimiter.
- Press Calculate and confirm that the preview shows the ampersand and brackets exactly where they are in the source.
- Check that a bracket or quote has not split the row into extra columns; that is a delimiter or quoting issue, not a markup one.
- Use Download (XLSX) and open tablora-table.xlsx.
- Review the cell in the spreadsheet as text; do not paste it into a web page or template that would interpret it.
When the converter refuses the text
Some characters cannot be stored in XML at all, such as most ASCII control characters left behind by old exports or copy and paste from terminals. The converter rejects text that contains them and shows Check the entered values and try again, rather than dropping characters silently. Find the invisible character in your source, remove or replace it in a copy, and calculate again.
This is different from what the Tablora app does when it writes an XLSX from a photo or PDF: it escapes ampersands and brackets the same way, but it removes characters that XML cannot hold, so the file always opens. If a cell's text matters character by character, compare it with the source before export.
Related escape case
Ampersands and brackets are only one kind of escaping. Text that looks like a SpreadsheetML character code, such as _x0041_, needs its own protection, which the text-safe converter also applies.
Original synthetic example
- Input
- note A&B <sample>
- Expected cell text
- A&B <sample>
- Cell storage
- Explicit text, not a formula or numeric cell