HP IAP Version 2.1 User Guide, March 2011

Spreadsheets
Look at the external representation of the following spreadsheet example.
Table 11 Excel spreadsheet
United States Presidents named John
1797-1801AdamsJohn
1825-1829AdamsJohn Quincy
1961-1963KennedyJohn Fitzgerald
1841-1845TylerJohn
The specific order in which the text in the cells is stored internally depends on:
• The version of the product, for example Excel or Quattro Pro, used to generate the spreadsheet
• The insertion order for the spreadsheet text
For the spreadsheet above, assuming the cell text for names were entered in the displayed order of
top left to bottom right (John Adams was entered first), and the title and dates were entered after the
names were entered, most versions of spreadsheets store the text internally as follows:
John
Adams
John Quincy
John Fitzgerald
Kennedy
Tyler
United States Presidents named John
1797–1801
1825–1829
1961–1963
1841–1845
Note the following features of the internal representation:
• Text sharing: Where certain text appears in more than one cell in the spreadsheet, the text may
appear only once in the internal representation. In this example, this is the case with the text “John”
and “Adams”. (Note that not all versions of Excel consistently share text in exactly this way.)
• This text sharing only occurs at the level of the entire text of a cell, and never occurs within cells.
Thus, “John Quincy” and “John Fitzgerald” remain whole and independent.
• Even accounting for text sharing, the specific ordering of various cell text in the internal represent-
ation does not necessarily follow presentation order, and instead often follows insertion order.
Because of these factors, text sequence matches in an Excel spreadsheet (for example) are only
consistent with the spreadsheet as viewed in Excel if the matched text appears wholly within a cell.
However, it is possible for sequences to match in inconsistent ways across cell text depending on the
precise version and editing history of that spreadsheet.
For the spreadsheet and order of insertion shown above, the following queries would match:
"John Adams"
"Adams John"
"Quincy John"
"John Fitzgerald Kennedy"
"Presidents named John"
HP IAP 2.1 User Guide 57