Created attachment 36747 [details] Maven test case with LibreOffice source file in zip file. It appears that POI cannot generate a DDE formula in a cell. Please refer the attached test case. For convenience, LibreOffice (soffice) is used as a DDE server. I am getting =(#NAME?,"soffice", ... in the spreadsheet, so the DDE( ... function is not coded as expected for some reason. The test case generates the formula. I am testing the generated spreadsheet with LibreOffice Version: 6.2.5.2 (x64). This appears to be significant because LibreOffice supports the DDE function as much as Excel. DDE is somewhat outdated but still widely supported. For me, the generation of the function by POI instead of manually entering it into a spreadsheet is a significant feature. That is because there is an issue with coding a DDE function whose parameter values are taken from spreadsheet cells not hard-coded: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=127210