How to fix java.lang.ClassNotFoundException

Aspose.Cells for Java API depends on some additional libraries; if they are missing, an exception may be thrown as java.lang.ClassNotFoundException.
This article lists such kinds of exceptions and explains which libraries need to be installed to resolve them.

How to fix ClassNotFoundException: org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.BouncyCastleProvider

Summary

Aspose.Cells for Java API depends on Bouncy Castle for encryption and decryption features. If the program needs to load or save encrypted spreadsheets, you must add a reference to bcprov-jdk16-146.jar in the project’s class path.

Symptoms

You may encounter the java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.BouncyCastleProvider.

Solution

The solution is actually very simple, as detailed below.

1. Download any major release of Aspose.Cells for Java.
2. Extract the downloaded archive and browse to \JDK 1.6\aspose-cells-x.x.0-java\lib directory.
3. Reference the bcprov-jdk16-146.jar in the class path of the project.

Alternatively, you can add the dependency in the pom.xml and let the project resolve the dependency via Maven.

<dependencies>
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId>
		<artifactId>bcprov-jdk16</artifactId>
		<version>1.46</version>
		<type>jar</type>
	</dependency>
</dependencies>