Apache POI - HSSF and XSSF Limitations

The intent of this document is to outline some of the known limitations of the POI HSSF and XSSF API's. It is not intended to be complete list of every bug or missing feature of HSSF or XSSF, rather it's purpose is to provide a broad feel for some of the functionality that is missing or broken.

• Charts
  
  
  • HSSF has some limited support for creating a handful of very simple Chart types, but largely this isn't supported. HSSF (largely) doesn't support changing Charts. You can however create a chart in Excel using Named ranges, modify the chart data values using HSSF and write a new spreadsheet out. This is possible because POI attempts to keep existing records intact as far as possible.
    
  • XSSF has only limited chart support including making some simple changes and adding at least some line and scatter charts, see the examples LineChart and ScatterChart.
    
    
• Macros
  
  Macros can not be created. The are currently no plans to support macros. However, reading and re-writing files containing macros will safely preserve the macros.
  
  
• Pivot Tables
  
  HSSF doesn't have support for reading or creating Pivot tables. XSSF has limited support for creating Pivot Tables, and very limited read/change support.