Create method for deleting empty trailing rows/columns

[lkmorlan]

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This is a feature request

Sometimes, spreadsheet files will come with a large number of trailing rows and/or columns that are completely empty (all values are NULL). It would be helpful if there was a method that deletes these. Delete any row or column that is the last in the table and is entirely filled with NULL. Repeat until there are none left.

[cweiske]

(This problem is described in the documentation: https://phpspreadsheet.readthedocs.io/en/stable/topics/Looping%20the%20Loop/#using-rangetoarray)

But many worksheets do have trailing empty rows (or columns); and it is quite common for an Excel spreadsheet to have only a few rows or columns of data, but for the spreadsheet itself to claim that the highest row is 1,048,576 or that the highest column is XFD.

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As described in https://github.com/PHPOffice/PhpSpreadsheet/issues/3240#issuecomment-1346918643 it is possible to ignore the empty cells when loading the file by using setReadEmptyCells(false).

[oleibman]

Question seems answered. Closing.

[lkmorlan]

This could still be a useful feature to have. One could load a spreadsheet, then make some changes to it that would result in there being trailing empty cells.

[oleibman]

I have not seen this type of problem except in association with loading a spreadsheet. Tell me how you think it might happen otherwise.

[lkmorlan]

If changes are made to a spreadsheet after it has been loaded. If some cells are set to NULL, the method could trim those cells and preceding empty cells. It's not a big deal; ::setReadEmptyCells() does what I need.