i have a problem of reading values from excel file via spreadsheet_excel_reader which is a php class used to manipulate excel files. $data = new Spreadsheet_Excel_Reader(); $data->setOutputEncoding('CP936'); $data->read("d:\\tmp.xls"); $rows=$data->sheets[0]['numRows']; $cell = $data->sheets[0]['cells'][1][1]; if i type many rows,say 1000, in the tmp.xls, it can read, $rows shows 1000, however, 1000 rows of data are copied from another excel file and these cells may have different background or other changes that differ from normal cells, it fails to read.the variable $rows shows nothing....what i can do now is to split these data into small groups, small enough to be read, it really takes plenty of time. i dont know why, has somebody met this problem ever?