用希腊字符创建excel

Question

i have used the following headers in order to create xls files that contains Greek characters on the fly.

first attempt:

header("Content-Type: application/$file_type;charset=utf-8");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$file_name.$file_ending");
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Expires: 0");

second attempt:

header("Content-Type: application/$file_type;charset=windows-1253");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$file_name.$file_ending");
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Expires: 0");

the created file althought it contains the correct Greek characters (viewed with a text editor) when i open it at the ms-excel the Greek characters are shown as sympols.

i have also tried a library that creates xls (open xls binary format) with the same outcome. This library has options to set the codepage and the charset but still nothing.

any ideas?

thanks.

Answer 1

If you're using a library then it should have a function to set the encoding to UTF-8. For example, with PEAR's Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer (http://pear.php.net/package/Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer/redirected), you would do:

<?php
    $workSheet = & $workBook -> addWorksheet('Students');
    $workSheet -> setInputEncoding('utf-8');
?>

Of course, you must also make sure that your data are actually utf-8 and not ISO-8859-7 or windows-1253 for example. Be aware that this does not support workbook name changing (ie using 'Μαθητές' instead of 'Students')