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Asked: 2026-05-21T22:18:06+00:00

I’m looking for an Excel library which reads/writes .xls (not .xlsx) files. I’m using

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I’m looking for an Excel library which reads/writes .xls (not .xlsx) files.

I’m using excellibrary but it’s very buggy and I can’t seem to open the files I create. The issue has been known for almost a year and hasn’t been fixed yet.

I’ve seen in another thread someone suggested EPPlus, but that only works with the 2007/2010 .xlsx format.

I’ve used Koogra in the past, and been quite happy with it, but I believe it can only read… not write.

If you know of a library, please let me know what it’s called.

Edit:
I’m quite happy to create my Excel file with the built-in Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel if necessary, however my machine has Office 2007 and the target machines only have Office 2003. I noticed I have 2 file versions for that library: 12, and 14. I checked the Excel version on the target machines and it’s 11.8169.8172 – I’m assuming that the built-in Excel interop will not work on the target?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I’d recommend NPOI. NPOI is FREE and works exclusively with .XLS files. It has helped me a lot.

    Detail: you don’t need to have Microsoft Office installed on your machine to work with .XLS files if you use NPOI.

    Check these blog posts:

    Creating Excel spreadsheets .XLS and .XLSX in C#

    NPOI with Excel Table and dynamic Chart

    [UPDATE]

    NPOI 2.0 added support for XLSX and DOCX.

    You can read more about it here:

    NPOI 2.0 series of posts scheduled

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