I used the following short program to read an excel file and write it out 
again. When the template xls file has been generated by Excel 97 everything is 
ok. When I use the file templateXP.xls which I produced by loading 
template.xls into ExcelXP and saved it without any modification, I get an 
error message on the resulting HSSF file. The error indicates that some 
formatting information has got lost.

The two template file (template.xls and templatexp.xls) are needed for 
reproducing the bug, I can provide them.

public class TemplateTest {

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		HSSFWorkbook wb;
		
		try {
			FileInputStream template = new FileInputStream
("template.xls");
			FileOutputStream result = new FileOutputStream(new File
("result.xls"));
			
			POIFSFileSystem templatefs = new POIFSFileSystem
(template);
			wb = new HSSFWorkbook(templatefs);
			wb.write(result);
			template.close();
			result.close();

			
			template = new FileInputStream("templatexp.xls");
			result = new FileOutputStream(new File
("resultxp.xls"));
			
			templatefs = new POIFSFileSystem(template);
			wb = new HSSFWorkbook(templatefs);
			wb.write(result);
			template.close();
			result.close();
		} catch (Exception e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
	}
}