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Category Archives: Excel 2003
Configuring a Web Server to Allow Excel File Creation via the Interop.Excel Namespace
In an earlier article I covered how to generate Excel reports on the fly using the Interop.Excel Namespace.
This is a really handy technique that also gives you full control over the minutia of the document you are creating. However the catch in using this technique is that you will need to update the configuration of your Web server to allow Web users to trigger Excel on your Web server. This can mean some pretty drastic security changes and possible loopholes in your Web server’s security so you should do a risk analysis before choosing this method.
In this article I will review the Web server security updates that need to be made to allow using the Interop.Excel Namespace to generate Excel documents for your Web site.
Please note that since I am developing this site for an Intranet, I am not as concerned with locking down the server. If you are working with a server that is exposed to the Web then you will want to review these security changes much more thoroughly.
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ASP.NET – Generating an Excel Report on the Fly Using the Interop.Excel Namespace
Choosing the best way to export your data from an ASP.NET Web page to Excel for your users is never an easy task. There are many ways to accomplish this task, each way having its pros and cons.
In an earlier article I covered one of the more common ways: how to take an existing report that has already been generated as an HTML table and stream it as Excel to the client browser. This is a great technique, but leaves it up to Excel to interpret the HTML that you are sending its way. Furthermore, Microsoft seems to be deprecating the markup that was previously so amazingly convenient when formatting HTML streamed to Excel. The article also goes into depth about what markup commands are still useful and what markup has been deprecated. It’s definitely worth reading this article if you are considering streaming HTML as an Excel document using the command: Response.ContentType = “application/ms-excel”
Before I go into further details on using the Interop.Excel namespace to generate Excel files, I’d like to point out that I am providing a fully functional example at the end of this article. If you are primarily interested in the code, then you can skip to the bottom of this article and you can copy and paste the code sample into a Visual Studio project where it should run without any problems.
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Generating Excel documents through HTML, XML, and CSS – Part 2
Overview:
The latest versions of Excel (2007, 2010) differ from Excel 2003 in their support of streaming a HTML document containing Excel-specific markup. Although core markup features still work, some of the previously supported functionality has now been removed.
This directly affects the ability in code to stream a table to Excel and then use MSO tags to format the layout.
In the more recent versions of Excel (2007, 2010) Microsoft has reworked their support for streaming Excel information on the Web and has added refined control over the ability to create an Excel document with a series of worksheets. But sadly with each new version of Excel they are removing much of their support for streaming HTML information to the browser that worked so well for Web developers in the past.
Instead, when using the newer Microsoft syntax, a temporary file must be saved to the server before it can be sent to the browser. Further, using the new Microsoft method one cannot simply send an HTML table, but must re-query the database, and then re-generate the entire document.
In this article I cover the tried-and-true method of streaming Excel directly to a client’s browser and explain what Excel markup still works, and what doesn’t. I will cover the newer method of doing so in a future article.
If you are interested in further background on this topic or useful links please see Part 1 of this article at: Generating Excel documents through HTML, XML, and CSS – Part 1
How to Stream the Excel Document Directly:
I recently had the requirement to output an ASP.NET GridView report in Excel, but additionally with the following Excel formatting requirements:
- Print in Landscape layout
- Add a detailed header to each printed page
- Add a detailed footer to each printed page
- Show Excel Rows and Columns on each printed page
- Freeze the header table row when paging through Excel
- Show the frozen header table row on each printed page
The requirements that cause the printing process to fail with Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 are:
- Show Excel Rows and Columns on each printed page
- Freeze the header table row when paging through Excel
- Show the frozen header table row on each printed page
Generating Excel documents through HTML, XML, and CSS – Part 1
I recently had the requirement to take the HTML from a batch of reports on a Web application and output these with very specific formatting requirements to Excel. I am familiar with the basic syntax of setting the content type to ‘application/ms-excel’ before streaming the HTML content. However things get rapidly more complex if the requirements include actually setting presets in Excel.
I’m surprised at how little documentation there is for how to do this online although everyone has a need to do it. The lack of information from the Microsoft official articles is also quite amazing. Basically the developer is left to their own devices when writing code to create spreadsheets dynamically through HTML, XML, and CSS.
The most helpful information I was able to find was at the following sites: (more…)
ASP.NET Export to Excel: Set the Default Print Paper Size Programmatically
I’ve been working on adding the ability to export to Excel format to reports that I have written in ASP.NET. While doing this I have received numerous feature requests including the ability to set by default the paper size to be printed to.
As a little bit of background on the topic: I use a traditional method of streaming the HTML version of the report to the browser with the content type set to MS Excel. This allows me to send Excel-specific markup to format parts of the Excel document.
One can set the default page settings for an Excel document using the Microsoft Excel XML Spreadsheet model (SpreadsheetML). Specifically, the XML hierarchy is:
<x:ExcelWorkbook>
<x:ExcelWorksheets>
<x:ExcelWorksheet>
<x:WorksheetOptions>
<x:Print>
<x:PaperSizeIndex>
Although documentation exists on the Microsoft Excel XML Spreadsheet model, I have not actually seen any detailed description on the options available when setting the page sizes. Since these are simply numeric values their meaning is not immediately apparent to me so I have been testing what each value means by trial and error. (more…)
