Question

I’m creating an excel file in memory using the MemoryStream API and EPPlus for creating an excel document.

My code for creating an excel file basically looks like this:

public Stream GetXlsDocument(IQueryable data)
{

    const string sheetName = "Sheet1";
    var file = new FileInfo("test2.xls");

    MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();
    using (ExcelPackage p = new ExcelPackage(stream))
    {
        p.Workbook.Worksheets.Add(sheetName);

        ExcelWorksheet ws = p.Workbook.Worksheets[1];
        ws.Name = sheetName;
        ws.Cells.Style.Font.Size = 11;
        ws.Cells.Style.Font.Name = "Calibri";

        // Headers
        ws.SetValue(1, 1, "Some data");

        p.SaveAs(stream);
    }

    stream.Position = 0;
    return stream;
}

Then my other function should serve this stream as a download to the user. I’m trying to do that like this:

var file = Documents.GetXlsDocument();

var memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
file.CopyTo(memoryStream);

Response.Clear();
Response.ContentType = "application/force-download";
Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=nfile.xls");
Response.BinaryWrite(memoryStream.ToArray());
Response.End();

This does show me a download dialog. But when i open my excel file, then the entire excel document is filled with garbage (i guess the binary data represented as a string).

I have no idea what i’m doing wrong.

Anyone any idea how i can make the excel file downloadable in a good format? Perhaps EPPlus already has something for this?

Answer 1

Don’t add a stream in the constructor. Keep the constructor empty.

So change this line:

using (ExcelPackage p = new ExcelPackage(stream))

to this:

using (ExcelPackage p = new ExcelPackage())