Cell Values

Cells contain values, whether the values were directly typed in (e.g., cell A2 in our example has the value External Link:) or are the result of a calculation (e.g., cell B3 in our example has the formula B2+1).

String values in a cell are not stored in the cell table unless they are the result of a calculation. Therefore, instead of seeing External Link: as the content of the cell's <v> node, instead you see a zero-based index into the shared string table where that string is stored uniquely. This is done to optimize load/save performance and to reduce duplication of information. To determine whether the 0 in <v> is a number or an index to a string, the cell's data type must be examined. When the data type indicates string, then it is an index and not a numeric value.