Create Excel (.XLS and .XLSX) file from C# [closed]

If you are happy with the xlsx format, try my codeplex project... EPPlus. Started it with the source from ExcelPackage, but today it's a total rewrite. Supports ranges, cell styling, charts, shapes, pictures, namesranges, autofilter and a lot of other stuff

I've used with success the following open source projects:

• ExcelPackage for OOXML formats (Office 2007)

• NPOI for .XLS format (Office 2003). NPOI 2.0 (Alpha) also supports XLSX.

Take a look at my blog posts:

Creating Excel spreadsheets .XLS and .XLSX in C#

NPOI with Excel Table and dynamic Chart

You can use OLEDB to create and manipulate Excel files. Check this: Reading and Writing Excel using OLEDB.

Typical example:

using (OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection("Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\\temp\\test.xls;Extended Properties='Excel 8.0;HDR=Yes'"))
{
  conn.Open();
  OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand("CREATE TABLE [Sheet1] ([Column1] string, [Column2] string)", conn);
  cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
}

EDIT - Some more links:

• Hey, Scripting Guy! How Can I Read from Excel Without Using Excel?
• How To Use ADO.NET to Retrieve and Modify Records in an Excel Workbook With Visual Basic .NET
• Reading and Writing Excel Spreadsheets Using ADO.NET C# DbProviderFactory

The commercial solution, SpreadsheetGear for .NET will do it.

You can see live ASP.NET (C# and VB) samples here and download an evaluation version here.

Disclaimer: I own SpreadsheetGear LLC

A few options I have used:

If XLSX is a must: ExcelPackage is a good start but died off when the developer quit working on it. ExML picked up from there and added a few features. ExML isn't a bad option, I'm still using it in a couple of production websites.

For all of my new projects, though, I'm using NPOI, the .NET port of Apache POI. NPOI 2.0 (Alpha) also supports XLSX.

And what about using Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office?

A few benefits:

• Doesn't require Office installed
• Made by Microsoft = decent MSDN documentation
• Just one .Net dll to use in project
• SDK comes with many tools like diff, validator, etc

Links:

• Download SDK
• Main MSDN Landing
• "How Do I..." starter page
• blogs.MSDN brian_jones announcing SDK
• blogs.MSDN brian_jones describing SDK handling large files without crashing (unlike DOM method)

An extremely lightweight option may be to use HTML tables. Just create head, body, and table tags in a file, and save it as a file with an .xls extension. There are Microsoft specific attributes that you can use to style the output, including formulas.

I realize that you may not be coding this in a web application, but here is an example of the composition of an Excel file via an HTML table. This technique could be used if you were coding a console app, desktop app, or service.

You can use ExcelXmlWriter http://www.carlosag.net/Tools/ExcelXmlWriter/

It works fine.

You actually might want to check out the interop classes. You say no OLE (which this isn't), but the interop classes are very easy to use.

You might be impressed if you haven't tried them.

Please be warned of Microsoft's stance on this:

Microsoft does not currently recommend, and does not support, Automation of Microsoft Office applications from any unattended, non-interactive client application or component (including ASP, ASP.NET, DCOM, and NT Services), because Office may exhibit unstable behavior and/or deadlock when Office is run in this environment.

You could consider creating your files using the XML Spreadsheet 2003 format. This is a simple XML format using a well documented schema.

If you're creating Excel 2007/2010 files give this open source project a try: http://closedxml.codeplex.com

You may want to take a look at http://www.gemboxsoftware.com/GBSpreadsheetFree.htm.

They have a free version with all features but limited to 150 rows per sheet and 5 sheets per workbook, if that falls within your needs.

I haven't had need to use it myself yet, but does look interesting.

The various Office 2003 XML libraries avaliable work pretty well for smaller excel files. However, I find the sheer size of a large workbook saved in the XML format to be a problem. For example, a workbook I work with that would be 40MB in the new (and admittedly more tightly packed) XLSX format becomes a 360MB XML file.

As far as my research has taken me, there are two commercial packages that allow output to the older binary file formats. They are:

• Gembox
• ComponentOne Excel

Neither are cheap (500USD and 800USD respectively, I think). but both work independant of Excel itself.

What I would be curious about is the Excel output module for the likes of OpenOffice.org. I wonder if they can be ported from Java to .Net.

I agree about generating XML Spreadsheets, here's an example on how to do it for C# 3 (everyone just blogs about it in VB 9 :P) http://www.aaron-powell.com/linq-to-xml-to-excel

Here's a completely free C# library, which lets you export from a DataSet, DataTable or List<> into a genuine Excel 2007 .xlsx file, using the OpenXML libraries:

http://www.mikesknowledgebase.com/pages/CSharp/ExportToExcel.htm

Full source code is provided, free of charge, along with instructions, and a demo application.

After adding this class to your application, you can export your DataSet to Excel in just one line of code:

CreateExcelFile.CreateExcelDocument(myDataSet, "C:\\Sample.xlsx");

It doesn't get much simpler than that....

And it doesn't even require Excel to be present on your server.

I've just recently used FlexCel.NET and found it to be an excellent library! I don't say that about too many software products. No point in giving the whole sales pitch here, you can read all the features on their website.

It is a commercial product, but you get the full source if you buy it. So I suppose you could compile it into your assembly if you really wanted to. Otherwise it's just one extra assembly to xcopy - no configuration or installation or anything like that.

I don't think you'll find any way to do this without third-party libraries as .NET framework, obviously, does not have built in support for it and OLE Automation is just a whole world of pain.

IKVM + POI

Or, you could use the Interop ...

Well,

you can also use a third party library like Aspose.

This library has the benefit that it does not require Excel to be installed on your machine which would be ideal in your case.

Here's a way to do it with LINQ to XML, complete with sample code:

Quickly Import and Export Excel Data with LINQ to XML

It's a little complex, since you have to import namespaces and so forth, but it does let you avoid any external dependencies.

(Also, of course, it's VB .NET, not C#, but you can always isolate the VB .NET stuff in its own project to use XML Literals, and do everything else in C#.)

The Java open source solution is Apache POI. Maybe there is a way to setup interop here, but I don't know enough about Java to answer that.

When I explored this problem I ended up using the Interop assemblies.

Have you ever tried sylk?

We used to generate excelsheets in classic asp as sylk and right now we're searching for an excelgenerater too.

The advantages for sylk are, you can format the cells.

Just want to add another reference to a third party solution that directly addresses your issue: http://www.officewriter.com

(Disclaimer: I work for SoftArtisans, the company that makes OfficeWriter)

Some 3rd party component vendors like Infragistics or Syncfusion provide very good Excel export capabilities that do not require Microsoft Excel to be installed.

Since these vendors also provide advanced UI grid components, these components are particularly handy if you want the style and layout of an excel export to mimic the current state of a grid in the user interface of your application.

If your export is intended to be executed server side with emphasis on the data to be exported and with no link to the UI, then I would go for one of the free open source options (e.g. ExcelLibrary).

I have previously been involved with projects that attempted to use server side automation on the Microsoft Office suite. Based on this experience I would strongly recommend against that approach.

Look at samples how to create Excel files.

There are examples in C# and VB.NET

It manages XSL XSLX and CSV Excel files.

http://www.devtriogroup.com/ExcelJetcell/Samples

public class GridViewExportUtil
{
    public static void Export(string fileName, GridView gv)
    {
        HttpContext.Current.Response.Clear();
        HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader(
            "content-disposition", string.Format("attachment; filename={0}", fileName));
        HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "application/ms-excel";

        using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter())
        {
            using (HtmlTextWriter htw = new HtmlTextWriter(sw))
            {
                //  Create a form to contain the grid
                Table table = new Table();

                //  add the header row to the table
                if (gv.HeaderRow != null)
                {
                    GridViewExportUtil.PrepareControlForExport(gv.HeaderRow);
                    table.Rows.Add(gv.HeaderRow);
                }

                //  add each of the data rows to the table
                foreach (GridViewRow row in gv.Rows)
                {
                    GridViewExportUtil.PrepareControlForExport(row);
                    table.Rows.Add(row);
                }

                //  add the footer row to the table
                if (gv.FooterRow != null)
                {
                    GridViewExportUtil.PrepareControlForExport(gv.FooterRow);
                    table.Rows.Add(gv.FooterRow);
                }

                //  render the table into the htmlwriter
                table.RenderControl(htw);

                //  render the htmlwriter into the response
                HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(sw.ToString());
                HttpContext.Current.Response.End();
            }
        }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Replace any of the contained controls with literals
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="control"></param>
    private static void PrepareControlForExport(Control control)
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < control.Controls.Count; i++)
        {
            Control current = control.Controls[i];
            if (current is LinkButton)
            {
                control.Controls.Remove(current);
                control.Controls.AddAt(i, new LiteralControl((current as LinkButton).Text));
            }
            else if (current is ImageButton)
            {
                control.Controls.Remove(current);
                control.Controls.AddAt(i, new LiteralControl((current as ImageButton).AlternateText));
            }
            else if (current is HyperLink)
            {
                control.Controls.Remove(current);
                control.Controls.AddAt(i, new LiteralControl((current as HyperLink).Text));
            }
            else if (current is DropDownList)
            {
                control.Controls.Remove(current);
                control.Controls.AddAt(i, new LiteralControl((current as DropDownList).SelectedItem.Text));
            }
            else if (current is CheckBox)
            {
                control.Controls.Remove(current);
                control.Controls.AddAt(i, new LiteralControl((current as CheckBox).Checked ? "True" : "False"));
            }

            if (current.HasControls())
            {
                GridViewExportUtil.PrepareControlForExport(current);
            }
        }
    }
}

Hi this solution is to export your grid view to your excel file it might help you out

You can create nicely formatted Excel files using this library: http://officehelper.codeplex.com/documentation
See below sample:

using (ExcelHelper helper = new ExcelHelper(TEMPLATE_FILE_NAME, GENERATED_FILE_NAME))
{
    helper.Direction = ExcelHelper.DirectionType.TOP_TO_DOWN;
    helper.CurrentSheetName = "Sheet1";
    helper.CurrentPosition = new CellRef("C3");

    //the template xlsx should contains the named range "header"; use the command "insert"/"name".
    helper.InsertRange("header");

    //the template xlsx should contains the named range "sample1";
    //inside this range you should have cells with these values:
    //<name> , <value> and <comment>, which will be replaced by the values from the getSample()
    CellRangeTemplate sample1 = helper.CreateCellRangeTemplate("sample1", new List<string> {"name", "value", "comment"}); 
    helper.InsertRange(sample1, getSample());

    //you could use here other named ranges to insert new cells and call InsertRange as many times you want, 
    //it will be copied one after another;
    //even you can change direction or the current cell/sheet before you insert

    //typically you put all your "template ranges" (the names) on the same sheet and then you just delete it
    helper.DeleteSheet("Sheet3");
}        

where sample look like this:

private IEnumerable<List<object>> getSample()
{
    var random = new Random();

    for (int loop = 0; loop < 3000; loop++)
    {
        yield return new List<object> {"test", DateTime.Now.AddDays(random.NextDouble()*100 - 50), loop};
    }
}

Infragistics has a really good commercial library. http://www.infragistics.com/dotnet/netadvantage/winforms/infragisticsexcel.aspx#Overview

you can just write it out to XML using the Excel XML format and name it .XLS and it will open with excel. You can control all the formatting (bold, widths, etc) in your XML file heading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_XML_formats#Excel_XML_Spreadsheet_example

Look for ExtremeML. It's a pretty cool library which enables you to use the OpenXML format for generating OpenXML files.

It's also an OpenSource project.

http://www.extrememl.com/