Setting Headers and Footers with C++

Headers and footers are the lines of text displayed below the top margin or above the bottom margin respectively. It’s possible to add headers and footers to the worksheets also. Headers and footers can be used to display useful information like page number, author name, topic name, or date and time. Headers and footers are managed using the page setup settings.

Setting Headers and Footers

Aspose.Cells allows you to add headers and footers to worksheets at runtime but we recommend setting headers and footers manually in a pre-designed file for printing. You can use Microsoft Excel as a GUI tool to set headers and footers to save effort and development time. Aspose.Cells can import the file and save the settings.

To add headers and footers at runtime, Aspose.Cells provides special API calls and script commands to format headers and footers.

Script Commands

Script commands are special commands that allow you to set header and footer formatting.

Script Commands	Description
&P	The current page number
&G	A picture
&N	The total number of pages
&D	The current date
&T	The current time
&A	The worksheet name
&F	The file name without its path
&&Text	Shows &Text. For example: &&WO will be displayed as &WO
&"<FontName>"	Represents a font name. For example: &“Arial”
&"<FontName>, <FontStyle>"	Represents font name with style. For example: &“Arial,Bold”
&<FontSize>	Represents font size. For example: “&14abc”. But, if this command is followed by a plain number to be printed in the header, this should be separated with a space character from the font size. For example: “&14 123”.

Set Headers and Footers

The PageSetup class provides two methods, SetHeader and SetFooter, used to add a header and footer to a worksheet. These methods take only two parameters:

• Section – the section where the header or footer should be placed. There are three sections: left, center and right, represented by 0, 1 and 2 respectively.
• Script – the script to be used for the header or footer. This script contains script commands to format headers or footers.

#include <iostream>
#include "Aspose.Cells.h"
using namespace Aspose::Cells;

int main()
{
    Aspose::Cells::Startup();

    // Create a new workbook
    Workbook excel;

    // Get the first worksheet's PageSetup
    PageSetup pageSetup = excel.GetWorksheets().Get(0).GetPageSetup();

    // Set worksheet name at the left section of the header
    pageSetup.SetHeader(0, u"&A");

    // Set current date and time at the central section of the header with custom font
    pageSetup.SetHeader(1, u"&\"Times New Roman,Bold\"&D-&T");

    // Set current file name at the right section of the header with custom font
    pageSetup.SetHeader(2, u"&\"Times New Roman,Bold\"&12&F");

    // Set a string at the left section of the footer with custom font for part of the string
    pageSetup.SetFooter(0, u"Hello World! &\"Courier New\"&14 123");

    // Set the current page number at the central section of the footer
    pageSetup.SetFooter(1, u"&P");

    // Set page count at the right section of the footer
    pageSetup.SetFooter(2, u"&N");

    // Save the workbook
    excel.Save(u"SetHeadersAndFooters_out.xls");

    Aspose::Cells::Cleanup();
    return 0;
}

Insert an Image into a Header or Footer

The PageSetup class has two additional methods, SetHeaderPicture and SetFooterPicture, used to add pictures into the header and footer. These methods take the parameters:

• Section – the header or footer section where the picture will be placed. There are three sections, left, center and right, represented by the values 0, 1 and 2 respectively.
• Byte array – the graphical data (the binary data should be written into the buffer of a byte array).

After executing the code below and opening the file, check the header of the worksheet by:

1. On the File menu, select Page Setup. A dialog will be displayed.
2. Select the Header/Footer tab.

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <vector>
#include "Aspose.Cells.h"

using namespace Aspose::Cells;
using namespace std;

int main()
{
    Aspose::Cells::Startup();

    // Source directory path
    U16String srcDir(u"..\\Data\\01_SourceDirectory\\");

    // Output directory path
    U16String outDir(u"..\\Data\\02_OutputDirectory\\");

    // Creating a Workbook object
    Workbook workbook;

    // Creating a string variable to store the url of the logo/picture
    U16String logo_url = srcDir + u"aspose-logo.jpg";

    // Declaring a FileStream object
    ifstream inFile;

    // Declaring a byte array
    vector<uint8_t> binaryData;

    // Opening the logo/picture in the stream
    inFile.open(logo_url.ToUtf8(), ios::binary);

    if (inFile.is_open())
    {
        // Get the size of the file
        inFile.seekg(0, ios::end);
        size_t fileSize = inFile.tellg();
        inFile.seekg(0, ios::beg);

        // Resize the byte array to the size of the file
        binaryData.resize(fileSize);

        // Read the file into the byte array
        inFile.read(reinterpret_cast<char*>(binaryData.data()), fileSize);

        // Creating a PageSetup object to get the page settings of the first worksheet of the workbook
        PageSetup pageSetup = workbook.GetWorksheets().Get(0).GetPageSetup();

        // Convert std::vector to Aspose::Cells::Vector
        Aspose::Cells::Vector<uint8_t> asposeBinaryData(binaryData.data(), static_cast<int32_t>(binaryData.size()));

        // Setting the logo/picture in the central section of the page header
        pageSetup.SetHeaderPicture(1, asposeBinaryData);

        // Setting the script for the logo/picture
        pageSetup.SetHeader(1, u"&G");

        // Setting the Sheet's name in the right section of the page header with the script
        pageSetup.SetHeader(2, u"&A");

        // Saving the workbook
        workbook.Save(outDir + u"InsertImageInHeaderFooter_out.xls");

        // Closing the FileStream object
        inFile.close();
    }
    else
    {
        cerr << "Failed to open the image file." << endl;
    }

    Aspose::Cells::Cleanup();
    return 0;
}