pentaho/pentaho-kettle · error · RuntimeException

Unable to get value of cell (

Error message

Unable to get value of cell (

What it means

OdfCell.getValue wraps any exception while reading an ODS cell's typed value into a RuntimeException reporting the cell's column and row. The underlying ODF toolkit call failed, so the cell's value cannot be produced.

Solutions

  1. Open the .ods in LibreOffice and re-save it to normalize the cell XML
  2. Check the cell at the reported (column,row) for unusual formatting/value types and re-enter it plainly
  3. Verify the file is not truncated/corrupt (unzip the .ods and validate content.xml)
  4. Fall back to the POI-based or JXL engine if the sheet can be stored as .xlsx/.xls
Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

// Open the .ods as a zip to detect truncation/corruption before reading
try (ZipFile z = new ZipFile(odsFile)) {
  if (z.getEntry("content.xml") == null) throw new IOException("content.xml missing — corrupt ODS");
}

Try / catch

try {
  Object v = cell.getValue();
} catch (RuntimeException e) {
  if (e.getMessage().startsWith("Unable to get value of cell")) {
    log.warn("Falling back to getContents() for " + e.getMessage());
    String text = cell.getContents();
  } else { throw e; }
}

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: During value extraction in getValue, the ODF cell throws (corrupt cell XML, unexpected value type in the ODS document, ODFDOM internal error); also triggered when the requested value type has no matching conversion case.

Common situations: ODS files produced by non-standard generators with malformed office:value attributes; percentage/currency cells whose value type doesn't map cleanly; damaged or partially downloaded .ods files.

Understand the failure class

Background: "failed to read file", EACCES, ENOENT and "could not read <path>" errors: when a program can't read a file from disk — this error's family across 49 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of pentaho/pentaho-kettle@f3058517a1 (2026-09-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/930a91afd34bf618. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at plugins/excel/core/src/main/java/org/pentaho/di/trans/steps/excelinput/ods/OdfCell.java:104

        case DATE:
          // Timezone conversion needed since POI doesn't support this apparently
          //
          long time = cell.getDateValue().getTime().getTime();
          long tzOffset = TimeZone.getDefault().getOffset( time );

          return new Date( time + tzOffset );
        case NUMBER_FORMULA:
        case NUMBER:
          return Double.valueOf( cell.getDoubleValue() );
        case STRING_FORMULA:
        case LABEL:
          return cell.getStringValue();
        case EMPTY:
        default:
          return null;
      }
    } catch ( Exception e ) {
      throw new RuntimeException( "Unable to get value of cell ("
        + cell.getColumnIndex() + ", " + cell.getRowIndex() + ")", e );
    }
  }

  public String getContents() {
    try {
      Object value = getValue();
      if ( value == null ) {
        return null;
      }
      return value.toString();
    } catch ( Exception e ) {
      throw new RuntimeException( "Unable to get string content of cell ("
        + cell.getColumnIndex() + ", " + cell.getRowIndex() + ")", e );
    }
  }

  public int getRow() {

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