Excel Table Mode

AutoFilter

Native Excel filter dropdowns — default behavior, opt-in/opt-out, and the sub-row expansion incompatibility.

AutoFilter adds native Excel filter and sort dropdowns to the column headers. Clicking a dropdown lets users filter visible rows, sort by value, or apply custom criteria — all within Excel without any additional configuration.

Default behavior by mode

The default differs between the two schema modes:

Mode	AutoFilter default	How to change
Report	Off	Set `autoFilter: true` on the table input
Excel table	On	Set `autoFilter: false` on the table input

This asymmetry reflects how Excel itself works: native excel tables always have filter dropdowns by default, while plain worksheet ranges do not.

Report mode: opting in

import { createExcelSchema
, createWorkbook
 } from "@chronicstone/typed-xlsx";

const schema
 = createExcelSchema
<{ region
: string; amount
: number }>()
  .column
("region", { accessor
: "region" })
  .column
("amount", { accessor
: "amount", style
: { numFmt
: "$#,##0.00" } })
  .build
();

const workbook
 = createWorkbook
();
workbook
.sheet
("Sales").table
("sales", {
  schema
,
  rows
: [
    { region
: "EMEA", amount
: 45000 },
    { region
: "AMER", amount
: 62000 },
  ],
  autoFilter
: true, // Adds filter dropdowns to report table headers
});

const buffer
 = workbook
.toBuffer
();

You can also pass { enabled: true } for the object form:

import { createExcelSchema
, createWorkbook
 } from "@chronicstone/typed-xlsx";

const schema
 = createExcelSchema
<{ region
: string; amount
: number }>()
  .column
("region", { accessor
: "region" })
  .column
("amount", { accessor
: "amount" })
  .build
();

const workbook
 = createWorkbook
();
workbook
.sheet
("Sales").table
("sales", {
  schema
,
  rows
: [],
  autoFilter
: { enabled
: true },
});

Excel table mode: opting out

import { createExcelSchema
, createWorkbook
 } from "@chronicstone/typed-xlsx";

const schema
 = createExcelSchema
<{ product
: string; stock
: number }>({ mode
: "excel-table" })
  .column
("product", { accessor
: "product" })
  .column
("stock", { accessor
: "stock" })
  .build
();

const workbook
 = createWorkbook
();
workbook
.sheet
("Inventory").table
("inventory", {
  schema
,
  rows
: [{ product
: "Widget A", stock
: 120 }],
  autoFilter
: false, // Disable the default autoFilter on this excel table
});

const buffer
 = workbook
.toBuffer
();

Incompatibility with sub-row expansion

AutoFilter is silently disabled (with a console.warn) when a report table uses sub-row expansion (an accessor that returns an array). Sub-row expansion creates merged cells, and Excel cannot apply autoFilter over a range that contains merged cells.

This only applies to report mode — excel-table mode doesn't support sub-row expansion at all (it throws at output time), so this conflict cannot arise.

If you see the warning and want to suppress it, either remove autoFilter: true from that table or remove the array-returning accessor causing the expansion.

Totals Row

Add native Excel aggregate rows to excel-table mode — sum, average, count, and more per column.

Buffered Workbook

Build XLSX files in memory with createWorkbook() — sheets, tables, layout, and output options.