Comments missing elements required by MS Excel

[charvolant]

Adding comments to a cell results in Microsoft Excel being unable to load the comments, with a message

We found a problem with some content in ’CaminoPrimitivo.xlsx’. Do you want us to try to recover as much as we can? If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes.

A recovered file removes the comments.

The generated comments1.xml looks like

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!--Sheet comments generated by xlsx-->
<comments xmlns="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2006/main">
  <authors>
    <author>de-calixtinus</author>
  </authors>
  <commentList>
    <comment authorId="0" ref="D10" visible="False">
      <text>
        <t>Via original Camino route
Trail (walkers only)</t>
      </text>
    <comment authorId="0" ref="D63" visible="False">
      <text>
        <t>Steep descent</t>
      </text>
    </comment>
  </commentList>
</comments>
'''

[qrilka]

Thanks for reporting this, it would be great if you could describe how "adding comments to a cell" was done with that we could have a reproducible scenario.

[nitinprakash96]

Hello,
I ran into this behaviour as well. Here's a script that can reproduce this:

#!/usr/bin/env stack
{- stack script
   --resolver lts-23.21
   --package xlsx
   --package time
   --package bytestring
   --package microlens
-}

{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}
{-# OPTIONS_GHC -Wall #-}

import Codec.Xlsx
import qualified Data.ByteString.Lazy as L
import Data.Time.Clock.POSIX (getPOSIXTime)
import Lens.Micro

cellCommentAt :: (RowIndex, ColumnIndex) -> Lens' Worksheet (Maybe Comment)
cellCommentAt i = atCell i . non def . cellComment

main :: IO ()
main = do
    ct <- getPOSIXTime
    let sheet =
            def
                & cellValueAt (1, 1)
                ?~ CellText "Hello"
                & cellValueAt (1, 2)
                ?~ CellText "World"
                & cellValueAt (1, 3)
                ?~ CellDouble 123.45
        addCommentsToSheet =
            sheet
                & cellCommentAt (1, 1)
                ?~ Comment (XlsxText "Comment on the second cell") "Nitin" True
                & cellCommentAt (1, 2)
                ?~ Comment (XlsxText "Comment on the second cell") "Nitin" True
                & cellCommentAt (1, 3)
                ?~ Comment (XlsxText "Comment on the third cell") "Nitin" True

        xlsx = def & atSheet "Sheet1" ?~ addCommentsToSheet

    -- Write to file
    L.writeFile "example.xlsx" (fromXlsx ct xlsx)

Works correctly on google sheets:

But when trying to open on MS Excel:

[qrilka]

thanks for the repro @nitinprakash96
I'm sure I will have time soon to look into this.
It would be great if somebody could investigate this - normally I'd just create a workbook using Excel and compare the XML to check what MS wants.