Excel formatting

Question

Hi,

I have an excel file (.xls) and I want to format it( adding borders, setting columns width, etc), but I want to do this without Excel. By this I mean to not have Excel installed on the  machine in order to run the program.

I tried this one:

Excel Xml Writer Library.

But when trying to open the xls files it gave an error, so I want to use another one.

Which free technology can I use?

Thanks.

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pyram

Answer 1

You can have a try at NPOI. Please refer to http://npoi.codeplex.com/

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mark kang

Answer 2

try this

http://www.carlosag.net/tools/excelxmlwriter/generator

Answer 3

When you speak of "Excel Sheet" do you mean a .xls (pre-2007 format) or .xlsx (the new fomrat used since Excel 2007)?

I ask because the later is nothing more then a bunch of XML files in a zip-container. (You can check that by renaming a *.xlsx to *.zip and view it's contents.)
And modifying a few XML file(s) in a zip container is many times easier then doing work with the older Excel Sheet Formats.

Answer 4

Thank you all!

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pyram

Answer 5

Add Borders:

            //Load Excel
            Workbook workbook = new Workbook();
            workbook.LoadFromFile(@"..\..\test.xls");
            Worksheet sheet = workbook.Worksheets[0];
             
            //Add Borders
            sheet.Range["A1:E15"].Borders.LineStyle = LineStyleType.Double;
            sheet.Range["A1:E15"].Borders[BordersLineType.DiagonalDown].LineStyle = LineStyleType.None;
            sheet.Range["A1:E15"].Borders[BordersLineType.DiagonalUp].LineStyle = LineStyleType.None;
            sheet.Range["A1:E15"].Borders.Color = Color.DeepSkyBlue;

Setting Column Width:

            sheet.SetColumnWidth(3, 18);

I use a .NET Excel component without MS Excel.