Export data to Excel (including formatting) using C#

Question

I have a DataTable in my program which I have previously exported to excel using a CSV file. However, I want to conditionally format the backgroun colour of cells - which obviously needs a new approach.

The issue is this - the computer where the software will run does not have Excel. So I cannot go down the route of calling the Excel api.

Is there an easy way of doing this that I have missed? If not, is the format of Excel files published or how can I achieve this goal?

Thanks.

EDIT:

For anyone else that is interested, I eventually found this post which provides the simplest method I have found. Works with Excel 2003.

Hassan · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-06 14:30:33Z

1

Which version of excel? If you need excel 2003, then take a look at : http://www.carlosag.net/Tools/ExcelXmlWriter/

If you're ok with excel 2007, then there's: http://excelpackage.codeplex.com/ (open source) or http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb448854.aspx (official MS product)

answered Jan 6, 2011 at 14:30

Hassan

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Jamie Treworgy · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-06 14:31:11Z

Check out NPOI, which is a .NET port of POI, a free MS office interop library. It's powerful and fairly straightforward to learn (though the documentation is iffy). I would read through some of the past posts here on NPOI (there aren't all that many) to become familiar with a few frustrating gotchas that are not so much problems as things that are counterintuitive and not always obvious from the documentation.

But once you get past the lack of a good primer it's an awesome library.

I assume you're talking about xls format. If you can use the newer XML based xlsx format, it's a totally different problem. You just need to write XML, the format is available on Microsoft's web site. There ~~may be~~ are (see other answer) tools that can help with this, though personally, I always just use NPOI and write XLS files to be sure anyone can open them.

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