I would assume this has something to do with Open Office XML. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML

Microsoft states that there are 4 reserved characters: <, >, &, and %. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms145315%28v=sql.90%29.aspx). I can't find a W3C document that calls this out specifically, but I deal with XML on a regular basis and use this to sanitize user input and it works properly with XML::Twig.

Those 4 characters are probably transformed into entities as listed on the link above when they were saved into the document.

In reply to Re: Spreadsheet::XLSX returning &lt; &gt; and &amp; instead of < > & by jellisii2
in thread Spreadsheet::XLSX returning &lt; &gt; and &amp; instead of < > & by psynk

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