The Microsoft Excel File Format - OpenOffice.org

5 Worksheet/Workbook Records
5.21 CONTINUE
BIFF2 BIFF3 BIFF4 BIFF5 BIFF8
003C H 003C H 003C H 003C H 003C H
Whenever the content of a record exceeds the given limits (see table), the record must be split. Several CONTINUE
records containing the additional data are added after the parent record.
BIFF version
BIFF2-BIFF5
BIFF8
Record CONTINUE, BIFF2-BIFF8:
Maximum data size of a record
2080 bytes (2084 bytes including record header)
8224 bytes (8228 bytes including record header)
Offset Size Contents
0 var. Data continuation of the previous record
Unicode strings are split in a special way. At the beginning of each CONTINUE record the option flags byte is repeated.
Only the character size flag will be set in this flags byte, the Rich-Text flag and the Far-East flag are set to zero.
!
In each CONTINUE record it is possible that the character size changes from 8-bit characters to 16-bit characters
and vice versa.
Never a Unicode string is split until and including the first character. That means, all header fields (string length,
! option flags, optional Rich-Text size, and optional Far-East data size) and the first character of the string have to
occur together in the leading record, or have to be moved completely into the CONTINUE record.
!
Formatting runs (➜2.5.1) cannot be split between their components (character index and FONT record index). If a
string is split between two formatting runs, the option flags field will not be repeated in the CONTINUE record.
Example: The remaining size of a record may be 10 bytes (it has 8214 bytes of data). Now the string “ABCDE-
GHΩI” has to be stored in this record. “Ω” is the capital Greek character Omega with the Unicode character code
03A9 H .
Note: The records are shown with their headers to make the example clearer.
Offset Size Contents Description
0 2 Any record identifier
2 2 2020 H (8224) Record data size
4 8214 Any data
8218 2 000A H (10) Unicode string character count
8220 1 00 H Unicode string option flags (8-bit characters)
8221 7 41 H 42 H … 47 H 8-bit character array “ABCDEFG”
8228 2 003C H Record identifier CONTINUE
8230 2 0007 H (7) Record data size
8232 1 01 H Unicode string option flags (16-bit characters)
8233 2 0048 H 16-bit character “H”
8235 2 03A9 H 16-bit character “Ω”
8237 2 0049 H 16-bit character “I”
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