xlsx-fixer 0.1.0

Fix Mac Excel corruption in .xlsx files generated by openpyxl.

xlsx-fixer

A lightweight utility to fix Mac Excel corruption issues caused by openpyxl.

The Problem

When openpyxl writes strings, it hardcodes them as inlineStr instead of using a Shared String Table (SST). Mac Excel (16.x+) often trips over these inline strings, triggering the infamous "We found a problem with some content" recovery dialog on every open.

The Solution

xlsx-fixer is a zero-dependency ZIP post-processor. It reads an openpyxl-generated .xlsx file, extracts all inline strings, builds a deduplicated Shared String Table (sharedStrings.xml), and rewrites the cell references to match the OOXML spec correctly.

Installation

pip install xlsx-fixer

Usage

CLI

Run it on any .xlsx file generated by openpyxl:

xlsx-fixer path/to/your/file.xlsx

Programmatic API

You can also run it directly inside your Python generation script, immediately after saving:

from openpyxl import Workbook
from xlsx_fixer import convert_inline_to_shared_strings

wb = Workbook()
ws = wb.active
ws['A1'] = "Hello World"

output_path = "output.xlsx"
wb.save(output_path)

# Run the post-processor to fix Mac Excel compat
convert_inline_to_shared_strings(output_path)