Symbolic Link (SYLK) is a Microsoft file format typically used to exchange data between applications, specifically spreadsheets. SYLK files conventionally have a .slk
suffix. Composed of only displayable ANSI characters, it can be easily created and processed by other applications, such as databases.
Contents
- Sample SYLK code
- for numeric formatting
- for column width
- cell formatting properties
- SYLK syntax
- References
Microsoft does not publish a SYLK specification. Variants of the format are supported by Multiplan, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Works, OpenOffice.org, and Gnumeric.
Note that even if a SYLK file is created by an application that supports Unicode (for example Microsoft Excel), the SYLK file will be encoded in the current system's ANSI code page, not in Unicode. If the application contained characters that were displayable in Unicode but have no codepoint in the current system's code page, they will be converted to question marks ('?') in the SYLK file.
Also note that if a character string in the SYLK file is to contain a semicolon (;) then it should be prefixed with another semicolon so the string would appear as e.g.; "WIDGET#04;;AXC1254". MS Excel will strip the first semicolon on import and the data element will appear as "WIDGET#04;AXC1254". It appears that the semicolon acts as an escape character of sorts.
A commonly encountered (and spurious) 'occurrence' of the SYLK file happens when a comma-separated value (CSV) format is saved with an unquoted first field name of 'ID', that is the first two characters match the first two characters of the SYLK file format. Microsoft Excel (at least to Office 2016) will then emit misleading error messages relating to the format of the file, such as "The file you are trying to open, 'x.csv', is in a different format than specified by the file extension...".
Sample SYLK code
As an example, the following SYLK code in a text file with the .slk extension:
ID;P C;Y1;X1;K"Row 1" C;Y2;X1;K"Row 2" C;Y3;X1;K"Total" C;Y1;X2;K11 C;Y2;X2;K22 C;Y3;X2;K33 Ewould be displayed like this when read by an appropriate spreadsheet:
for numeric formatting
The formatting of 2 decimal digits is applied to Column 2 using
F;P2;C2where P0 is for General, P1 is for no decimal, P2 is for 2 digits, P3 has leading $ sign with 2 decimal points as defined below.
ID;P P;PGeneral P;P_(* #,##0_);;_(* -#,##0_);;_(* "-"_);;_(@_) P;P_(* #,##0.00_);;_(* (#,##0.00);;_(* "-"??_);;_(@_) P;P_("$"* #,##0.00_);;_("$"* (#,##0.00);;_("$"* "-"??_);;_(@_) C;Y1;X1;K"Row 1" C;Y2;X1;K"Row 2" C;Y3;X1;K"Total" C;Y1;X2;K11 C;Y2;X2;K22 C;Y3;X2;K0;ER1C2+R2C2 F;P2;C2 Ewould be displayed like this when read by an appropriate spreadsheet:
for column width
F;W< n1 > [S] < n2 > [S] < n3 >
defines the widths of a group of columns:
For example: Adding these SYLK codes will adjust the column width of column 1 and 2 to 20 and 30 respectively.
F;W1 1 20 F;W2 2 30cell formatting properties
F; < cl > < n > < c2 >For example: The following SYLK code demonstrates the cell formatting properties:
ID;P P;PGeneral C;Y1;X1;K"Row 1 Left Justify" F;P0;FG0L C;Y2;X1;K"Row 2 Right Justify" F;P0;FG0R C;Y3;X1;K"Total at Center" F;P0;FG0C C;Y1;X2;K11 C;Y2;X2;K22 C;Y3;X2;K0;ER1C2+R2C2 F;Y1;X2;FF2L F;Y2;X2;FF2R F;Y3;X2;F$2C F;W1 2 25 ESYLK syntax
SYLK_file ::= Record + Record ::= RecordType Field* newlineDate and time are stored as a floating point value. The whole number part is a number of days from the Jan 1 1900 (if the O record contains the ;V0 directive, specifying 1900 as the starting point for calculations), the fraction is the number of seconds divided by 86400 (60*60*24, number of seconds in a day). Conversion to unix time can be done by subtracting the difference between Jan 1 1970 and Jan 1 1900 (25,569 days) and then multiplying by 86400; converting from unix time to SYLK datetime is done by dividing the value by 86400 and then adding 25569. The cell style has to be set to some date formatting value, e.g. P;Pdd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss
to be displayed properly.
.slk file exports opened with Excel have a limit of 255 characters in a cell. This limit is not present in LibreOffice.