Question

I am creating a pros and cons list on the differences between SpreadSheetGear and the native DataGridView. Trying to determine if we should buy a control or use native DataGridView or some other native control. I don’t need formulas or charting. I do need multiple worksheets, standard formatting capabilities, multiple tabular areas per worksheet, merged cells, named cells, hiding of rows, protecting of certain cells, detail cells in the worksheet along with tabular areas in the same worksheet, and editting capabilities. I think that SpreadSheetGear supports this while the DataGridView does not support this. The only problem which I have with SpreadSheetGear is the overall cost. I need to make sure that I should use SpreadSheetGear vs datagridview or another less expensive control. Any assistance with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

I have been using SpreadSheetGear for a few years now. It works well for my situation because my users are accountants and are very comfortable using Excel. SpreadSheetGear gives me a way to give them an Excel-like experience while having data that is connected with a database.

All of the following feature work like Excel: multiple worksheets, standard formatting capabilities, merged cells, named cells, hiding of rows, protecting of certain cells.

Editing capabilities – Do you mean data editing? A SpreadSheetGear worksheet control has events such as, cellEndEdit, where you can get the contents of the cell that you can use to update your model.

I’m not sure what you are asking with the next two features: multiple tabular areas per worksheet and detail cells in the worksheet along with tabular areas in the same worksheet.

I have not looked for another spreadsheet control in a few years so I’m not sure what is currently out there. Before I purchased SSG, I tried at several options, but did not find anything that worked as well for me. An important feature I needed was a worksheet that did formulas, so your situation is probably quite different.