I am working on a WPF 4.0 application which uses the Microsoft Office Interop to read and write to Excel files. But I am facing a scenario where I need to read/write data from/to Excel files on systems that do not have Office installed.
This is somewhat a repeat of this question. The only reason I reposted this question because the earlier post was 3 years old and I just wanted to know if there is a better way available right now.
The requirement is that I need to write into and save the file as .xls/.xlsx formats and read from the same. I am supporting both the format using the Interop right now.
- Buying a license is not an option.
- Installing Excel is not an option.
- Need to Support Read/Write from .xls/.xlsx formats.
- Easy to Implement as I am a little behind schedule. Would not be able to give a lot of time on implementation.
- Need a solution that is trustworthy and robust, meaning it should be something that you have used personally or have a good feedback about.
- Would prefer a solution that can cater to both read/write and can support both .xls/.xlsx formats. If something like this doesn’t exist, can use different solutions, but all the above points would apply to them individually.
- Don’t need suggestions, but more like guidance.
Please do not vote to close this question as duplicate as the other ones do not give a concrete solution. There are too many suggestions. I need a solution that you are confident about as this application goes into final build soon and if I do not get any robust solution to this, we might end up releasing as is.
If you can live without the xls-support (only xlsx) then you should most definitely look at the OpenXML SDK:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5124
I doesn’t require Excel or any extra license, you can do both read and write, I would say that it is robust and it comes with the Productivity Tool which is great. On the other hand, the API isn’t that intuitive and you can’t process .xls-files.