Exporting tabular data to Excel from ASP.NET

April 21, 2003 3:33 PM Comments [5] Posted in Web Services | ASP.NET | XML

There's a number of ways to "export" data to Excel from an ASP.NET site - some more elegant than others.

Gross: You can use ASP.NET to generate a CSV file of Mime Type text/plain or text/csv and write it back to the browser.
NOT Gross: You can use ASP.NET to generate an XML-SS (Excel XML Spreadsheet) document and write it back to the browser.
Really Easy but not Really XMLy: You can take advantage of the ASP.NET DataGrid's ability to generate HTML tables quickly and return the page with a Mime Type of application/vnd.ms-excel. Here's a great example on how to create these reports.
Easy but uses 3rd Party Control: Use ExcelWriter on the server side to create the Report.
Disgusting: Automate Excel on the ServerSide. Don't do this for Pete's Sake.

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Comments [5]

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Tuesday, April 22, 2003 7:03:17 AM UTC

OK, Scott, why do you find the XML approach "less gross"? It seems like the cleanest solution to me.

Don Box

Tuesday, April 22, 2003 3:42:13 PM UTC

Oops...I meant to write NOT Gross.

Scott Hanselman

Thursday, March 11, 2004 1:53:19 PM UTC

You say not to use automation. How am I supposed to create multiple worksheets and manipulate them? Automation seems to be the only way to do it and I have an application that needs to create a workbook and add three different worksheets from three different datasets. If you could explain how to do this without having to use automation and NOT using 3rd-party controls, I would appreciate it.

Thanks!

Ivan Samuelson

Thursday, June 03, 2004 3:27:32 AM UTC

How did you know that I need to do this? There must be a hole in my tin-foil hat again.

Seriously, I appreciate the post and will put it to good use.

Thanks.