GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 736202
Saving strings in xlsx using type "str"
Last modified: 2014-09-08 13:09:26 UTC
This have shown up in this github issue - https://github.com/qrilka/xlsx/pull/12 It appears that when exporting to xlsx Gnumeric uses "str" cell type for simple strings but spec says explicitly that this cell type means "Cell containing a formula string." And code under the question is located near https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnumeric/tree/plugins/excel/xlsx-write.c#n1606
The real question here is: what does Excel do? I think what you are asking for is to use "inlineStr" instead of "str". For that, we need to know if Excel and LO can read that.
This problem has been fixed in our software repository. The fix will go into the next software release. Thank you for your bug report. Excel, LO, and Gnumeric accept either version. Excel and LO produce neither version, opting instead for putting everything into the string table.