Styles and Layout

Witan supports workbook styling and worksheet layout operations used by Excel's visible grid: fills, fonts, borders, alignment, number formats, rich text, row heights, column widths, hidden rows and columns, outline metadata, and autofit.

Use this page for direct formatting and layout changes. For rule-driven formatting, see Conditional Formatting.

Cell Styles

Use setStyle on a cell or range:

witan xlsx exec report.xlsx --save --stdin <<'WITAN'
await xlsx.setStyle(wb, "Summary!A1:D1", {
  fill: { color: "#1F4E78" },
  font: { color: "#FFFFFF", bold: true },
  alignment: { horizontal: "center", vertical: "center" },
  border: {
    bottom: { style: "thin", color: "#D9EAF7" }
  }
})
WITAN

Use getStyle to inspect a cell's resolved style model:

const style = await xlsx.getStyle(wb, "Summary!A1")

Style payloads support:

Style area	Fields
Fill	Solid color, pattern fill, pattern color, and gradient fill
Font	Name, size, color, bold, italic, strike, underline, and vertical alignment
Alignment	Horizontal/vertical alignment, rotation, wrap text, shrink-to-fit, indent, reading order, and auto-indent
Border	Top, bottom, left, right, and diagonal borders with style and color
Number format	Excel number format strings
Protection	Locked and formula-hidden flags
Rich text	Text runs with per-run font styling

Pass null for a style area to clear that area.

Number Formats

Set Excel number formats directly with numberFormat. The same Excel-compatible formatter is used for workbook display text, rendering, lint format analysis, and chart labels that link to source-cell formats.

await xlsx.setStyle(wb, "Summary!B2:B20", {
  numberFormat: "$#,##0.00;[Red]($#,##0.00);-"
})

Witan supports the major Excel number-format constructs:

Area	Support
General and built-ins	`General` plus Excel built-in format IDs, including accounting built-ins
Numeric placeholders	`0`, `#`, and `?` placeholders, fixed and optional decimals, grouping separators, comma scaling, literals, escaped characters, `_` spacing, and `*` repeat-fill directives
Percent	`%` scaling and percent metadata
Currency and accounting	Currency symbols, accounting patterns, and currency identity tags such as `[$USD-409]`
Dates and times	Year/month/day formats, localized month and weekday names, hour/minute/second formats, AM/PM, subseconds, and Excel 1900-date compatibility
Elapsed time	`[h]`, `[m]`, and `[s]` elapsed-time formats
Fractions	Proper, improper, and mixed fractions with `0`, `#`, and `?` placeholders
Scientific notation	Exponent formats such as `0.00E+00` and related `E+` / `E-` patterns
Sections and conditions	Positive/negative/zero/text sections, comparison conditions such as `[<0]`, and dedicated zero sections
Text formats	`@` text placeholders with literal text
Color directives	Color sections such as `[Red]` for rendered color and format metadata
Locale tags	`[$-...]` locale tags for separators and localized month/day names across a broad locale table

Examples:

await xlsx.setStyle(wb, "Summary!C2:C20", {
  numberFormat: '[$-de]d mmmm yyyy'
})

await xlsx.setStyle(wb, "Summary!D2:D20", {
  numberFormat: "[h]:mm:ss"
})

await xlsx.setStyle(wb, "Summary!E2:E20", {
  numberFormat: '#,##0.0,,"M"'
})

Number formats change displayed text and rendered semantics; they do not change the underlying cell value. Format patterns follow Excel's 255-character number-format limit when parsed for display.

Rich Text

Use richText when one cell needs mixed font runs:

await xlsx.setStyle(wb, "Summary!A1", {
  richText: [
    { text: "Revenue ", style: { bold: true } },
    { text: "Q4", style: { italic: true, color: "#666666" } }
  ]
})

Row And Column Layout

Set row and column dimensions, visibility, outline levels, and collapsed state:

await xlsx.setRowProperties(wb, "Summary", 1, 1, {
  height: 24,
  hidden: false
})

await xlsx.setColumnProperties(wb, "Summary", "B", "D", {
  width: 14,
  outlineLevel: 1
})

Use Workbook Structure for row and column insertion/deletion.

Autofit

Like Excel, Witan automatically fits affected row heights when setCells edits cell content.

Use autoFitColumns and autoFitRows after writing content:

const columns = await xlsx.autoFitColumns(wb, "Summary", ["A", "B", "C"], {
  minWidth: 8,
  maxWidth: 32,
  padding: 1
})

const rows = await xlsx.autoFitRows(wb, "Summary", [1, 2, 3], {
  minHeight: 15,
  maxHeight: 80
})

Autofit uses workbook fonts, number formats, wrapping, merged cells, text rotation, rich text, hidden rows/columns, and other display properties to estimate Excel-style visible dimensions.

Rendering And Linting

Witan Render draws the supported style and layout model, including font fallback, fills, borders, alignment, rich text, row/column geometry, hidden rows and columns, merged cells, and number-format display text.

Witan Lint uses the same layout information for display diagnostics such as clipped text, text overflow, and overlapping objects.

See xlsx API for style signatures and Writing and structure for row, column, and autofit signatures.

Tables

Images and Drawings