Can i create a Microsoft Excel file without using Microsoft Interop Assembly?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How can I programatically create, read, write an excel without having office installed?

Can i create a Microsoft Excel file without using Microsoft Office Interop Assembly? I need to export all the values in a sql server table to an Excel file. Total number of rows can vary between 50000 to 1200000 rows. I need to generate the Excel file from my C#.net code where i will read the values of the table. The only restriction i have is I cannot use Microsoft Office Interop Assembly.

I can't use CSV, or use the HTML table trick, because some of the files will contain multiple tabs, where each tabs will contain data from different tables.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1369361/how-can-i-programatically-create-read-write-an-excel-without-having-office-ins/1369413#1369413 — Gregoire, Oct 31 '12 at 17:52

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 03 '15 at 00:04

2

Your best bet might be to just export your data in a CSV file. This is beneficial for a number of reasons:

CSVs are generally smaller than excel workbooks (read: faster to create via code)
Excel can open CSVs just like normal documents and edit them and such.
It will be very simple to create a CSV using a few loops and some elbow grease in C#.

The only downfall to this is if you were somehow planning on formatting your data, especially before you got it into a workbook form.

edited Nov 03 '15 at 00:04

Jamal

763
7
22
32

answered Oct 31 '12 at 17:49

Josh Bibb

477
4
14

1

Good suggestion. One could also launch Excel itself on the csv and use macro's to apply formatting. – Oct 31 '12 at 17:51
If you need to have specific formatting, you could use XML. That makes it quite complicated though. – CSharpie Oct 31 '12 at 17:55
3

Some of my Excel will contain multiple tabs, where each tabs will contain data from different tables. That is why i did not go for csv file. – user1242496 Oct 31 '12 at 17:59
I see. That makes things a bit trickier. – Josh Bibb Oct 31 '12 at 18:00

Pablo Claus · Answer 2 · 2012-10-31T18:20:01.600

1

You could use this:

http://netoffice.codeplex.com/

Features are (but not only) :

All features of the Office versions 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013 are included.
No dependencies, no interop assemblies, no need for VSTO
Syntactically and semantically identical to the Microsoft Interop Assemblies

edited Oct 31 '12 at 18:20

answered Oct 31 '12 at 17:55

Pablo Claus

5,886
3
29
38

Can i create a Microsoft Excel file without using Microsoft Interop Assembly?

2 Answers2