Exporting Data to Excel Spreadsheet

Hi all,

I am an undergraduate research aid for a biochemistry lab and am currently working to optimize the manner in which we analyze a lot of our data from our experiments. The program we currently use is an open source program called ImageJ which we utilized to track cancer cells and analyze their trajectories in our time lapse videos. The program is written in Java and the source code is free to download ( I posted a link below) and is beautiful and extensive code. However, for my project I simply need to optimize this program for our personal use and the main task at hand is exporting the trajectory data to an Excel spreadsheet. I am using Eclipse to edit my code and have read about JExcel API but wasn't sure how to really integrate this or if this would be compatible with Eclipse. Any help would be extremely helpful as I really am a true novice when it comes to coding in Java.

ImageJ: Download

2 open source libraries I know of for excel: JExcel and Apache POI. Can't comment on JExcel but I've used POI with great success, just load it up as a 3rd party library in Eclipse (right click project -> Properties -> Java Build Path -> Libraries) and add it as a library. (PS. would be interested in hearing more about the research...)

I'm trying to add the Apache POI to Eclipse as a Library, I assumed I would be using a User Library but the POI file I downloaded from the Apache website doesn't seem to contain a .Jar file to import. I also read on the website that I would need Apache Ant and Apache Forrest to run the POI. Do I actually need all of these and if so is there a general tip for locating the .Jar files in these rather extensive zip files?

The latest stable binary download should contain a jar (in fact should contain a few jar's). I think it may require some of the accompanying jar's to run (such as log4j), but the website should outline the required libraries (as well as provide some examples for working with worksheets). If you downloaded something that requires ant you may have downloaded the source file rather than the binary

Alright I did indeed originally download the source file but after rectifying this problem I downloaded the binary and imported all the jar's I could find and then Eclipse separated them in the package explorer into Referenced Libraries and then one library I had to create on my own and named lib which contains the poi jar. Does this sound like a valid set up or have I muddled something up?

You shouldn't really need to create a library named lib and add jars in there. Just place the required libraries where you see fit, and add them to the classpath (as described in my post above). This should be all that is needed...but if you can access the libraries and run/export the project the set up should be fine.