Question

Is there a way to export a gridview to MS word and keep the formatting from the gridview. The code below works to export the gridview but I cannot figure out how to keep the formatting. (I cannot use any 3rd party software)

    Response.Clear()
    Response.Buffer = True
    Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment;filename=GridViewExport.doc")
    Response.Charset = ""
    Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-word"

    Dim sw As New StringWriter()
    Dim hw As New HtmlTextWriter(sw)
    GridView1.RenderControl(hw)
    Response.Output.Write(sw.ToString())
    Response.Flush()
    Response.End()

Answer 1

My best guess is that you are defining most of the Grid’s colors, column alignments etc, via classes defined in a CSS file and when you export, these classes can no longer be referenced.

To fix it, you need to use inline styles so that the HTML rendered is self-contained and the colors and other formatting is preserved when the grid is written as a Word document.