Get, Set and Clear Cell Properties

Updated on Jun 16, 2026

Cells are the atomic parts of a worksheet and its basic data units. Each cell can be assigned a value, borders, fill, format, style, and much more. The following sections describe the properties offered by cells and demonstrate how to retrieve and change them.

• Get, Set and Clear Methods

• Cell Properties

• Value Property

• Borders Property

• Fill Property

• Indent Property

Get, Set and Clear Methods

To access cell properties, create a CellSelection object that contains the region of cells you want to change. For more information about retrieving CellSelection instances, see the Accessing Cells of a Worksheet article.

Example 1 creates a selection for cells in the range A1:F6.

Example 1: Create CellSelection

C#

Workbook workbook = new Workbook();
Worksheet worksheet = workbook.Worksheets.Add();
CellSelection selection = worksheet.Cells[0, 0, 5, 5];

Once you have a CellSelection instance, you can set and retrieve the properties of its cells. Each property is manipulated through three methods that get, set, and clear the value of the property, respectively. Typically, the set methods take a single argument, which indicates the value to be set. Similarly, the clear methods have no parameters and reset the properties to their default values. The get methods, however, require more attention.

With one minor exception, the get methods of all cell properties return an object of type RangePropertyValue<T>. The class exposes two properties that indicate the value of the property for the cell range:

• IsIndeterminate: Indicates whether the value of the retrieved property is consistent among all cells in the specified CellSelection. If the property has one and the same value for all cells, IsIndeterminate is set to false. However, if the value of the retrieved property varies throughout the cells in the CellSelection, the IsIndeterminate property is set to true and the Value property of the RangePropertyValue<T> class is set to its default value.

• Value: Contains the value of the retrieved property. If the IsIndeterminate property is set to false, Value contains the value of the retrieved property for the whole CellSelection region. If the IsIndeterminate property is set to true, the Value property is set to its default value.

Cell Properties

Cells in RadSpreadProcessing offer several properties that allow you to change their content and appearance. The following list outlines all cell properties:

• Value

• Border

• Fill

• FontFamily

• FontSize

• ForeColor

• Format

• HorizontalAlignment

• Indent

• IsBold

• IsItalic

• IsWrapped

• IsStrikethrough

• VerticalTextAlignment ((none, superscript, or subscript))

• StyleName

• Underline

• VerticalAlignment

• IsLocked

• TextRotation

As already mentioned, the CellSelection class exposes methods that get, set, and clear each of the properties listed previously. The names of the methods are constructed through the concatenation of the action the method executes (Get, Set, Clear) and the name of the property. For example, the methods that get, set, and clear the IsBold property are GetIsBold(), SetIsBold(), and ClearIsBold().

Example 2 illustrates how to use these methods on the region A1:F6.

Example 2: Use GetIsBold(), SetIsBold() and ClearIsBold() Methods

C#

Workbook workbook = new Workbook();
Worksheet worksheet = workbook.Worksheets.Add();
CellSelection selection = worksheet.Cells[0, 0, 5, 5];

selection.SetIsBold(true);
bool isBold = selection.GetIsBold().Value;
selection.ClearIsBold();

Using the previous approach you can set the value of almost all cell properties. There are a few exceptions to the general get, set, and clear rule, and each of them is described in one of the following sections.

When using GetFontSize() and SetFontSize() methods, keep in mind that the measurement units used in RadSpreadProcessing are Device Independent Pixels (DIPs). You can convert them to points or other units using the Unit class. For more information, go to the Measurement Units help topic.

Example 3 demonstrates how to apply basic text formatting to worksheet cells. The first cell applies a strikethrough effect, while the following cells illustrate vertical text alignment by rendering text as superscript and subscript respectively.

Example 3: Using SetIsStrikethrough and SetVerticalTextAlignment

C#

Workbook workbook = new Workbook();
Worksheet worksheet = workbook.Worksheets.Add();

CellSelection cell = worksheet.Cells[0, 0];
cell.SetValue("This text is strikethrough");
cell.SetIsStrikethrough(true);

cell = worksheet.Cells[1, 0];
cell.SetValue("This text is superscript");
cell.SetVerticalTextAlignment(VerticalTextAlignment.Superscript);

cell = worksheet.Cells[2, 0];
cell.SetValue("This text is subscript");
cell.SetVerticalTextAlignment(VerticalTextAlignment.Subscript);

Value Property

The Value property uses an instance of ICellValue to retrieve and change its value. The property supports the following types of cell values, all of which conform to the ICellValue interface: EmptyCellValue, NumberCellValue, BooleanCellValue, TextCellValue, FormulaCellValue. Similarly to the other properties, Value has three methods that control the property: GetValue(), SetValue(), and ClearValue(). For more information about different value types, see the Cell Value Types article.

The GetValue() method retrieves the value of the property and returns an instance of RangePropertyValue<ICellValue>. The Value property of the RangePropertyValue instance returns the actual value of the selected region.

Example 4 illustrates how to retrieve the value of cell B2.

Example 4: Retrieve Value of Cell

C#

Workbook workbook = new Workbook();
Worksheet worksheet = workbook.Worksheets.Add();
CellSelection selection = worksheet.Cells[1, 1];

ICellValue cellValue = selection.GetValue().Value;

As the document model supports different types of cell values, the CellSelection class offers multiple overloads of the SetValue() method that allow you to produce different types of values. For example, if you choose the method that accepts a double instance, the Value of the cell is an instance of NumberCellValue. The SetValue() method has three more overloads that take DateTime, string, and ICellValue, respectively.

Example 5 demonstrates how to set the value of a given selection.

Example 5: Set Value of CellSelection

C#

//set DateTime value
selection.SetValue(DateTime.Now);

//set double value
selection.SetValue(51.345);

//set ICellValue
ICellValue value = worksheet.Cells[5, 5].GetValue().Value;
selection.SetValue(value);

//set string value
selection.SetValue("Total");

//set formula value
selection.SetValue("=C1+C10");

Borders Property

The Borders property uses a CellBorders object for getting and setting its property value. The CellBorders class contains eight instances of type CellBorder that describe respectively the left, top, right, bottom, inside horizontal, inside vertical, diagonal up, and diagonal down borders. In turn, the CellBorder object holds information about the style and color of the border. The GetBorders() method returns an instance of RangePropertyValue<CellBorders>.

Example 6 demonstrates how to set the value of the Borders of the regions B2:C4 and E2:F4.

Example 6: Set Value of Borders

C#

Workbook workbook = new Workbook();
Worksheet worksheet = workbook.Worksheets.Add();
ThemableColor purple = new ThemableColor(Color.FromArgb(255, 155, 89, 182));
ThemableColor darkBlue = new ThemableColor(Color.FromArgb(255, 44, 62, 80));

CellBorders purpleBorders = new CellBorders(new CellBorder(CellBorderStyle.Dotted, purple));
worksheet.Cells[1, 1, 2, 2].SetBorders(purpleBorders);

CellBorders darkBlueBorders = new CellBorders(
	new CellBorder(CellBorderStyle.Medium, darkBlue),   // Left border
	new CellBorder(CellBorderStyle.Medium, darkBlue),   // Top border
	new CellBorder(CellBorderStyle.Medium, darkBlue),   // Right border
	new CellBorder(CellBorderStyle.Medium, darkBlue),   // Bottom border
	new CellBorder(CellBorderStyle.Thin, purple),       // Inside horizontal border
	new CellBorder(CellBorderStyle.Thin, purple),       // Inside vertical border
	new CellBorder(CellBorderStyle.None, darkBlue),     // Diagonal up border
	new CellBorder(CellBorderStyle.None, darkBlue));    // Diagonal down border

worksheet.Cells[1, 4, 2, 5].SetBorders(darkBlueBorders);

The result of Example 6 is demonstrated in the following figure.

Figure 1: Resulting Borders

Fill Property

The Fill property uses an IFill object for getting and setting its property value. The document model supports two types of fills represented through the PatternFill and GradientFill classes, both of which conform to the IFill interface.

As its name suggests, the PatternFill object fills the background of a region of cells using a repeated pattern of shapes. To create a PatternFill instance, specify the type of the pattern, the background color, and the pattern color of the fill. You can choose between eighteen types of patterns, such as HorizontalStripe, DiagonalCrossHatch, Gray75Percent, and many more. The PatternFill object also allows you to set the background of a cell to a solid color.

Example 7 creates two PatternFill objects with a DiagonalStripe and Solid PatternType respectively.

Example 7: Create and Set PatternFill

C#

Workbook workbook = new Workbook();
Worksheet worksheet = workbook.Worksheets.Add();

PatternFill diagonalStripePatternFill = new PatternFill(PatternType.DiagonalStripe, Color.FromArgb(255, 231, 76, 60), Color.FromArgb(255, 241, 196, 15));
worksheet.Cells[0, 0, 0, 5].SetFill(diagonalStripePatternFill);

PatternFill solidPatternFill = new PatternFill(PatternType.Solid, Color.FromArgb(255, 46, 204, 113), Colors.Transparent);
worksheet.Cells[1, 0, 5, 5].SetFill(solidPatternFill);

The result of Example 7 is illustrated in the following figure.

Figure 2: Applied PatternFill

The GradientFill sets the background of a region of cells to a gradual blending of two colors. To create a GradientFill, specify a GradientType and the two colors that blend.

Example 8 assigns the region A1:F1 a smooth horizontal green gradient.

Example 8: Create and Set GradientFill

C#

Workbook workbook = new Workbook();
Worksheet worksheet = workbook.Worksheets.Add();
worksheet.Rows[0].SetHeight(new RowHeight(50, true));

GradientFill greenGradientFill = new GradientFill(GradientType.Horizontal, Color.FromArgb(255, 46, 204, 113), Color.FromArgb(255, 0, 134, 56));
worksheet.Cells[0, 0, 0, 5].SetFill(greenGradientFill);

The result of Example 8 is illustrated in the following figure.

Figure 3: Applied GradientFill

Indent Property

In addition to the GetIndent(), SetIndent(), and ClearIndent() methods, CellSelection offers two more methods that increase and decrease the value of the Indent property. Those methods are IncreaseIndent() and DecreaseIndent() and neither of them takes arguments. Example 9 shows how to use the methods.

Example 9: Increase and Decrease Indent

C#

Workbook workbook = new Workbook();
Worksheet worksheet = workbook.Worksheets.Add();
CellSelection selection = worksheet.Cells[0, 0, 5, 5];

selection.IncreaseIndent();
selection.DecreaseIndent();

See Also

• Accessing Cells of a Worksheet
• Cell Value Types
• PatternType Enumeration
• GradientType Enumeration