Excel Copy Buffer Plugin

Description

Just like Excel you can select multiple cell and copy (Ctrl+C) and paste to Excel (Ctrl+V). However what you must know is that this plugin evaluate every single cell by their values (the raw value unless you specify otherwise, continue reading for more info).

Usage

All you need to do is enable the Grid Option enableExcelCopyBuffer: true and give it a try. From your grid, start selecting multiple cells with the mouse then copy (with Ctrl+C) and paste to Excel (with Ctrl+V)

Component

this.columnDefinitions = [
  { id: 'title', name: 'Title', field: 'id' },
  { id: 'description', name: 'Description', field: 'description' },
  { id: 'duration', name: 'Duration (days)', field: 'duration', type: 'number' },
];
this.gridOptions = {
  enableExcelCopyBuffer: true,
};

Copy & Paste with Cell Formatter

What if you have a date in UTC format in your dataset but your grid shows it as a Date ISO format? In that case, you are using a Formatter (e.g. formatter: Formatters.dateIso) and you wish to use that formatter. Good news, that is supported with and to make is simpler for the implementation, we will use a flag that already exist which is exportWithFormatter and is used by the Export to File service (for more info, read Wiki - Export to File

The exportWithFormatter can be used in 2 ways, on each column definition independently or for the entire grid through it's grid option.

exportWithFormatter through each Column Definition

this.columnDefinitions = [
  {
    id: 'start', name: 'Start', field: 'start',
    formatter: Formatters.dateIso,
    exportWithFormatter: true
  },
  {
    id: 'finish', name: 'Finish', field: 'finish',
    formatter: Formatters.dateIso,
    exportWithFormatter: true
  },
];

this.gridOptions = {
  enableExcelCopyBuffer: true,
};

exportWithFormatter through Grid Options

this.columnDefinitions = [
  { id: 'start', name: 'Start', field: 'start', formatter: Formatters.dateIso },
  { id: 'finish', name: 'Finish', field: 'finish', formatter: Formatters.dateIso },
];

this.gridOptions = {
  enableExcelCopyBuffer: true,
  exportOptions: {
    // set at the grid option level, meaning all column will evaluate the Formatter (when it has a Formatter defined)
    exportWithFormatter: true
  },
};

Sanitize Formatter Ouput

In some cases a Formatter can be formed of HTML and that will end up showing in your Copy+Paste. You can simply use the sanitizeDataExport flag which will remove any HTML tags from the output. For an example below, let say that our first Title column are all displayed in bold in the grid (e.g. <b>Title 1</b>), we want to sanitize that output a regular text output (e.g. Title 1)

exportWithFormatter through each Column Definition

this.columnDefinitions = [
  {
    id: 'title', name: 'Title', field: 'id',
    formatter: Formatters.bold,
    exportWithFormatter: true,
    sanitizeDataExport: true
  }
];

this.gridOptions = {
  enableExcelCopyBuffer: true
};

exportWithFormatter through Grid Options

this.columnDefinitions = [
  { id: 'title', name: 'Title', field: 'id', formatter: Formatters.bold }
];

this.gridOptions = {
  enableExcelCopyBuffer: true,
  exportOptions: {
    exportWithFormatter: true,
    sanitizeDataExport: true
  },
};

Disable pasting on specific columns

If you want to disable pasting values for specific columns you can deactivate it using the denyPaste property on the Column config.

this.columnDefinitions = [
  {
    id: 'colA', name: 'Col A', field: 'col_a',
    formatter: Formatters.bold,
    exportWithFormatter: true,
    sanitizeDataExport: true,
    denyPaste: true // <------------
  }
];

This will even work in situations where your table copy buffer stretches over disabled cells, by simply skipping them. So for the following config (x = paste disabled; o = paste enabled), pasting a 3 cell stretching table buffer will result in Col A and C being updated but ColB ignoring the paste and keeping its original value

Col A | Col B | Col C --------------------- o | x | o NEW | x | NEW

Disable pasting on specific cells

If you need even more fine grained control, you can make use of the gridOption onBeforePasteCell:

this.gridOptions = {
  enableExcelCopyBuffer: true,
  excelCopyBufferOptions: {
    onBeforePasteCell: (e, args) => {
      // e.g deny paste on first cell
      return args.cell > 0;
    }
  }
};

This way you have full control, via the args parameters, to get a ref to the current row and cell being updated. Also keep in mind that while performing a buffered table paste (e.g three cols at once) and only one of them has a denying condition, the other cells paste will pass successfully.

Handling quoted multiline pastes

When copying Excel cells, where the value is a multiline text, the copy buffer will result in a quoted text buffer. Slickgrid will properly handle the case when this content itself contains characters, to not break onto multiple rows as well as not split on the next column if characters are contained.

You can control if the newlines should be replaced with a specific value by defining it in replaceNewlinesWith. As an example you could set it to ' '.

Additionally, you can define that the quoted string is pasted without the quotes by setting removeDoubleQuotesOnPaste to true.

Note: requires v5.2.0 and higher