While working on a recent project at a client, we had the opportunity to refactor some data extracts that were using a commercial Excel writing library, which we then converted to using the Apache POI Library for Excel. These data extracts were reports that included some calculated values, and depending on the client, were required to be password protected. When completed, the reports would be emailed to the recipients configured for each client.
In this post, we discuss the challenge of delivering protected Microsoft documents via email. We introduce a Java code solution for emailing password-protected Excel files when using the Apache POI Library.
Some of the required calculations we chose to implement using Excel formulas. Implementing formulas wasn’t a hard task and worked for what was needed.