C# output to Excel spreadsheet, using Excel 2000+

I'm writing a program that reads a text file, extracts information, and outputs it to a template Excel spreadsheet that already exists.

I've managed to do this on my computer开发者_C百科 using the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel reference and its related methods, and it works fine. I have Excel 2010. However the computers that this program will be used on mostly have either Excel 2000 or Excel 2003, and it won't work on them.

Does anyone know a way to make a program target all versions of Excel from 2000 upwards?

Cheers,

Greg

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If your needs are simple and you don't have $900 for Aspose.Cells to throw around, you can do any of the following:

• Use NPOI to read, inject data into, and export your template.

• Create a basic HTML file with a table and just named it *.xls. You can save your template in Excel as HTML and replace bits and pieces to insert your data.

• Create an XML file using Office 2002/2003 XML format, it's pretty straightforward (caveat: can't be read in Excel 2000). As above, you can save your template in XML Spreadsheet format, read it in, and do some simple stuff to inject your data.

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You really need to target 2000 or under. 2010 and 2003 will open a 2000 format document whereas 2000 will not open a 2010 document. Office has a single format for 97-2000 and that's what you need to create to make everybody happy.

Interop depends on the version you have installed and I personally have dodged using interop due to its "unmanaged" nature (and it seems to love file locks).

If you want hassle free and extremely fast/powerful creation of Excel documents, you really can not do better than Aspose.Cells in my opinion.

Find it here.