Question

I’m working on an ASP.NET web projec using VS2010,C#, I want my users to get excel file output from table reports, I know how to create CSV files but I’m going to create EXCEL files, for example a button that when clicked, enables user to download table data in EXCEL format, also I’m going to write some unicode text (persian, farsi language) into my excel, what are my options? currently I use following code to generate CSV file:

            Response.Clear();
        Response.Buffer = true;
        Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment;filename=" + "db" + ".csv");
        Response.Charset = "";
        Response.ContentType = "application/text";

        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        sb.Clear();

        //append new line
        sb.Append("\r\n");

        for (int i = 0; i < tblDatabase.Rows.Count; i++)
        {
            //add separator
            for (int j = 0; j < tblDatabase.Rows[0].Cells.Count; j++)
                sb.Append(Table3.Rows[i].Cells[j].Text + ",");
            //append new line
            sb.Append("\r\n");
        }
        Response.Output.Write(sb.ToString());
        Response.Flush();
        Response.End();

Answer 1

There is no big change when modifying this code to create Excel file instead of csv.

Just change your extension

Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment;filename=" + "db" + ".xls");

Change content type

Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel";

Here is how to write rows of data in Excel sheet.

Response.Write("<table border='1px' bordercolor='black'>");
Response.Write("<tr>");
// loop through column names to display a header row
foreach (DataColumn dc in tblDatabase.Columns)
{
    Response.Write("<td><strong>" + dc.ColumnName + "</strong></td>");
}
Response.Write("</tr>");

int i;
foreach (DataRow dr in tblDatabase.Rows)
{
    Response.Write("<tr>");
    for (i = 0; i < tblDatabase.Columns.Count; i++)
    {
        Response.Write("<td>" + dr[i].ToString() + "</td>");
    }
    Response.Write("</tr>");
}
// end table
Response.Write("</table>");