The Microsoft Excel File Format - OpenOffice.org

4 Worksheet/Workbook Stream
4.10 Internal and External References
This chapter describes all types of 3D and external references. In detail, this could be:
• A reference to a cell or a cell range of another sheet in the same workbook (3D reference);
• A reference to a cell or a cell range of a sheet in another workbook (external reference);
• A reference to a global or local defined name (internal name);
• A reference to a defined name in another workbook (external name);
• An external function (add-in, sheet macro, Basic macro);
• A DDE link;
• An OLE link.
For external references and external names a combination of XCT and CRN records will occur. These records store
values of cells of the document. If the external document cannot be found, these values will be used to get the result of
an external reference. An XCT record (➜5.114) contains the number of following CRN records. A CRN record (➜5.23)
stores the contents of one cell or a sequence of cells of one row. Fragmentary cell ranges or cell ranges spanning over
more than one row are split into several CRN records. 3D references do not use these records because the referenced
cells are located in the own document.
It is possible to determine whether the cached cell values (the XCT and CRN records) will be stored in the file. In BIFF3
and BIFF4 this option is stored in the SHEETPR record (➜5.97). From BIFF5 on the optional record BOOKBOOL
(➜5.9) contains this option.
For all the following examples an external document “example.xls” is used. It contains 3 sheets named “ExtSheet1”,
“ExtSheet2” and “ExtSheet3”.
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