Using office scripts to read superScripts characters from a cell in excel online

Question

I'm attempting to read data from Excel cells using office scripts; some of the values in these cells are formatted as superscripts. When I use office scripts (Typescript) to read data from these cells, the contents of the cell are returned as regular numbers ( completely ignoring the superscripts , displaying them as usual numbers ). Another problem is that the cell loses its superscript formatting whenever I select its text in Excel Online, and the only way to restore it is by pressing (CTRL + Z).

In the same excel file, I attempted to put in a new cell with data that contained superscripts that I had made and copied from the website SuperScriptGenerator. I can now read the content of the cell using office scripts, and that would display the text of the cell while preserving the superscript characters. I can also pick the cell's content without losing the formatting of the superscript characters.

I am aware that there may be a text encoding problem, but in this instance, on Excel Online, I was unable to determine the text's encoding. The existing superscripts are causing problems (superscripts formatting disappears as I choose the cell content, and shows as regular numbers when reading the cell content with officeScripts/typescript), however the string I copied from the superscript generator and inserted on the excel worked great. Any advice or guidance on this matter?

Answer 1

My understanding is that superscript and subscript texts are basically just regular characters rendered with unique formatting capabilities in Office Apps (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.). The HTML tags for "sup" and "sub" are presumably a reasonable counterparts for this.

For example, in HTML, A² + B² = C² will be rendered as:

A² + B² = C²

But if you copy it and paste into a plain text editor like Notepad, you will notice it will become:

A2 + B2 = C2

This is because any formatting properties (in this case, the <sup> property) would get lost for plain text.

As of right now, the Office Scripts APIs getValue and getText only handle raw texts and numbers without any formatting features, they behave identically. 

Now you can try to copy this text and paste it into Notepad again:

A² ⁺ B² ⁼ C²

You'll notice the superscripts still look correct in Notepad this time! 

I hope this helps you.