Null Pointer Exception in WorkbookFactory.create(input-stream)

[Scott Callaghan]

Hi,

I get a null pointer exception when I use a WorkbookFactory.create() for a XSSF 
file. I am able to use it successfully with HSSF.

Here is my code:

        FileInputStream fin = new FileInputStream(inFile);
        Workbook wb = null;
        try {
            wb = WorkbookFactory.create(fin);
        }
        catch (Exception e) {
            System.out.println("Workbook object could not be created");
            e.printStackTrace();
            return;
        }

I verified that the inFile is an ".xlsx" file, it exists and can be opened by 
Excel. The null pointer exception stack looks as follows:

java.lang.NullPointerException
    at org.apache.poi.util.PackageHelper.copy(PackageHelper.java:129)
    at org.apache.poi.util.PackageHelper.clone(PackageHelper.java:87)
    at org.apache.poi.util.PackageHelper.clone(PackageHelper.java:44)
    at org.apache.poi.POIXMLDocument.ensureWriteAccess(POIXMLDocument.java:185)
    at org.apache.poi.xssf.usermodel.XSSFWorkbook.<init>(XSSFWorkbook.java:169)
    at 
org.apache.poi.ss.usermodel.WorkbookFactory.create(WorkbookFactory.java:63)

I am using POI 3.6. My class path includes only the following jar files from 
POI distribution:
   poi-3.6-20091214.jar
   poi-ooxml-3.6-20091214.jar
   poi-ooxml-schemas-3.6-20091214.jar
   xmlbeans-2.3.0.jar

Earlier, I had been getting the NoClassDefFoundError but the problem 
disappeared after I successively included more of the jar files from the 
distribution.

I would appreciate any answers or suggestions.

- Scott