Exception reading XLSB File Apache POI java.io.CharConversionException

Apache POI doesn't support the .xlsb file format for anything other than text extraction. Apache POI will happily provide full read or write support .xls files (via HSSF) and .xlsx files (via XSSF), or both (via the common SS UserModel interface).

However, the .xlsb format is not supported for generatl operations - it's a very odd hybrid between the two, and the large amount of work involved has meant no-one has been willing to volunteer/sponsor the work required.

What Apache POI does offer for .xlsb, as of Apache POI 3.15 beta3 / 3.16, is a text extractor for .xlsb files - XSSFBEventBasedExcelExtractor. You can use that to get the text out of your file, or with a few tweaks convert it to something like CSV

For full read/write support, you'll need to convert your file to either .xls (if it doesn't have very large numbers of rows/columns), or .xlsx (if it does). If you're really really keen to help though, you could review the source code for XSSFBEventBasedExcelExtractor, then have a go at contributing patches to add full support to POI for it!

(Additionally, I think from the exception that your particular .xlsb file is partly corrupt, but even if it wasn't it still wouldn't be supported by Apache POI for anything other than text extraction, sorry)

I have tried reading XLSB file using Apache POI and it is successful. Below is the code snippet I have used.

import org.apache.poi.openxml4j.exceptions.InvalidFormatException;
import org.apache.poi.openxml4j.exceptions.OpenXML4JException;
import org.apache.poi.openxml4j.opc.OPCPackage;
import org.apache.poi.ss.usermodel.DataFormatter;
import org.apache.poi.xssf.binary.XSSFBSharedStringsTable;
import org.apache.poi.xssf.binary.XSSFBSheetHandler;
import org.apache.poi.xssf.binary.XSSFBStylesTable;
import org.apache.poi.xssf.eventusermodel.XSSFBReader;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class ApachePoiXLSB {

    public static void main (String [] args){

        String xlsbFileName = "test.xlsb";

        OPCPackage pkg;

        try {
            pkg = OPCPackage.open(xlsbFileName);
            XSSFBReader r = new XSSFBReader(pkg);
            XSSFBSharedStringsTable sst = new XSSFBSharedStringsTable(pkg);
            XSSFBStylesTable xssfbStylesTable = r.getXSSFBStylesTable();
            XSSFBReader.SheetIterator it = (XSSFBReader.SheetIterator) r.getSheetsData();

            List<String> sheetTexts = new ArrayList<>();
            while (it.hasNext()) {
                InputStream is = it.next();
                String name = it.getSheetName();
                TestSheetHandler testSheetHandler = new TestSheetHandler();
                testSheetHandler.startSheet(name);
                XSSFBSheetHandler sheetHandler = new XSSFBSheetHandler(is,
                        xssfbStylesTable,
                        it.getXSSFBSheetComments(),
                        sst, testSheetHandler,
                        new DataFormatter(),
                        false);
                sheetHandler.parse();
                testSheetHandler.endSheet();
                sheetTexts.add(testSheetHandler.toString());
            }
            System.out.println("output text:"+sheetTexts);

        } catch (InvalidFormatException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (OpenXML4JException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (SAXException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}


import org.apache.poi.xssf.eventusermodel.XSSFSheetXMLHandler;
import org.apache.poi.xssf.usermodel.XSSFComment;

class TestSheetHandler implements XSSFSheetXMLHandler.SheetContentsHandler {

        private final StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

        public void startSheet(String sheetName) {
            sb.append("<sheet name=\"").append(sheetName).append(">");
        }

        public void endSheet() {
            sb.append("</sheet>");
        }

        @Override
        public void startRow(int rowNum) {
            sb.append("\n<tr num=\"").append(rowNum).append(">");
        }

        @Override
        public void endRow(int rowNum) {
            sb.append("\n</tr num=\"").append(rowNum).append(">");
        }

        @Override
        public void cell(String cellReference, String formattedValue, XSSFComment comment) {
            formattedValue = (formattedValue == null) ? "" : formattedValue;
            if (comment == null) {
                sb.append("\n\t<td ref=\"").append(cellReference).append("\">").append(formattedValue).append("</td>");
            } else {
                sb.append("\n\t<td ref=\"").append(cellReference).append("\">")
                        .append(formattedValue)
                        .append("<span type=\"comment\" author=\"")
                        .append(comment.getAuthor()).append("\">")
                        .append(comment.getString().toString().trim()).append("</span>")
                        .append("</td>");
            }
        }

        @Override
        public void headerFooter(String text, boolean isHeader, String tagName) {
            if (isHeader) {
                sb.append("<header tagName=\"").append(tagName).append("\">").append(text).append("</header>");
            } else {
                sb.append("<footer tagName=\"").append(tagName).append("\">").append(text).append("</footer>");

            }
        }

        @Override
        public String toString() {
            return sb.toString();
        }
    }