Known limitations

This page lists the known limitations of HyperFormula at its current development stage:

• Node.js versions older than 13 don't properly compare culture-insensitive strings. HyperFormula requires the full International Components for Unicode (ICU) to be supported. Learn more (opens new window)
• Multiple workbooks are not supported. One instance of HyperFormula can handle only one workbook with multiple worksheets at a time.
• For cycle detection, all possible dependencies between cells are taken into account, even if some of them could be omitted after the full evaluation of expressions and condition statements. The most prominent example of this behavior is the "IF" function which returns a cycle error regardless of whether TRUE or FALSE causes a circular reference.
• There is no data validation against named ranges. For example, you can't compare the arguments in a formula like this: =IF(firstRange>secondRange, TRUE, FALSE).
• Custom functions don't automatically recalculate the size of their result arrays when the formula dependencies change.
• There is no relative referencing in named ranges.
• The library doesn't offer (at least not yet) the following features:
  • 3D references
  • Constant arrays
  • Dynamic arrays
  • Asynchronous functions
  • Structured references ("Tables")
  • Relative named expressions
  • Functions cannot use UI metadata (e.g., hidden rows for SUBTOTAL).

Nuances of the implemented functions

• HyperFormula immediately instantiates references to single cells to their values, instead of treating them as 1-length ranges, which slightly changes the behavior of some functions (e.g., NPV).
• SUBTOTAL function does not ignore nested subtotals.
• CHISQ.INV, CHISQ.INV.RT, CHISQ.DIST.RT, CHIDIST, CHIINV and CHISQ.DIST (CHISQ.DIST in CDF mode): Running time grows linearly with the value of the second parameter, degrees_of_freedom (slow for values>1e7).
• GAMMA.DIST, GAMMA.INV, GAMMADIST, GAMMAINV (GAMMA.DIST and GAMMADIST in CDF mode): Running time grows linearly with the value of the second parameter, alpha (slow for values>1e7).
• For certain inputs, the RATE function might have no solutions, or have multiple solutions. Our implementation uses an iterative algorithm (Newton's method) to find an approximation for one of the solutions to within 1e-7. If the approximation is not found after 50 iterations, the RATE function returns the #NUM! error.
• The INDEX function doesn't support returning whole rows or columns of the source range – it always returns the contents of a single cell.
• The FILTER function accepts either single rows of equal width or single columns of equal height. In other words, all arrays passed to the FILTER function must have equal dimensions, and at least one of those dimensions must be 1.
• Array-producing functions (e.g., SEQUENCE, FILTER) require their output dimensions to be determinable at parse time. Passing cell references or formulas as dimension arguments (e.g., =SEQUENCE(A1)) results in a #VALUE! error, because the output size cannot be resolved before evaluation.

OFFSET function

HyperFormula resolves the OFFSET function at parse time rather than during evaluation. The parser inspects the arguments and rewrites the expression into a plain cell reference or range. This keeps the dependency graph accurate but imposes several restrictions.

• The first argument must be a reference to a single cell. Passing a range causes the cell to store a parser error (the API call itself does not throw — read the error via getCellValue).

  // Cell A1 stores a parser error — the first argument must be a single cell, not a range
  hf.setCellContents({ sheet: 0, row: 0, col: 0 }, '=OFFSET(A1:B1, 0, 0)');
  

• The row-shift, column-shift, height, and width arguments must be static integer literals known at parse time. Cell references and formulas passed as shift or size arguments cause the cell to store a parser error.

  // Cell A1 stores a parser error — the row-shift argument must be a static integer literal
  hf.setCellContents({ sheet: 0, row: 0, col: 0 }, '=OFFSET(A1, C3, 0)');
  

  Lifting this restriction requires treating OFFSET as a regular interpreted function. The work is tracked in issue #910 (opens new window).

• The height and width arguments must be bare positive integer literals (the parser accepts only NUMBER AST nodes). Unary + prefixes, parenthesised expressions, values less than 1, and non-integer values are rejected at parse time.

• When the computed target falls outside the sheet, the parser stores a #REF! error in the cell at parse time (rather than during evaluation) with the message Resulting reference is out of the sheet.

  // Cell A1 stores #REF!
  hf.setCellContents({ sheet: 0, row: 0, col: 0 }, '=OFFSET(A1, -1, 0)');
  

• OFFSET is resolved at parse time, so getCellFormula returns the computed reference, not the original OFFSET call.

  const hf = HyperFormula.buildFromArray([[1, 45, '=OFFSET(A1, 0, 1)']]);
  hf.getCellFormula({ sheet: 0, row: 0, col: 2 }); // '=B1'