HP StorageWorks Reference Information Storage System V1.5 User Guide (T3559-96045, November 2008)

Excel spreadsheets
Look at the external representation of the following Excel spreadsheet.
Table 15 Excel spreadsheet
United States Presidents named John
John Adams
1797-1801
John Quincy Adams
1825-1829
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
1961-1963
John Tyler
1841-1845
The spec ific order in which the text in the cells is stored internally depends on:
• The version of Excel 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 displayed order from top letf
to bottom right (John Adams was entered first) and the title and dates were entered after all the names
were entered, most versions of Excel store the text internally a s follows:
John
Adams
John Quincy
John Fitzgerald
Kennedy
Tyler
United States Presidents na m ed 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 c ell, 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 representation
does not necessarily follow presentation order, and i nstead often follows inser tion order.
Because of these factors, text sequence matches in an Excel spreadshe et are only consistent with the
spreadsheet as viewed in Excel i f the matched text appears wholly within a cell. However, it is possible
for sequences to match in inconsistent ways across cell text d epending 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"
And, the following queries would not match:
"John Tyler"
"Quincy Adams"
"John Q uincy Adams"
"John Adams 1797–1801"
52
Query expression syntax and matching