Planetarion Forums

Dante Hicks · 26 Jul 2005, 14:57

Can anyone think of an elegeant / "nice" way of doing the following...

I have various data about properties in various SQL databases, some of which people want to produce some simple reports on (e.g. show me all properties on so and so street). This side of things isn't a problem, using a web (asp) interface + some simple ODBC stuff I can get nice looking HTML tables listing all sorts of data, presented in a way which highlights certain things (e.g. I can list every property and then highlight each one in red which has asbestos in it by simply doing an if....asbestos_flag = true then...css class='red' type thing).

However, quite a lot of users want to export this information to Excel (to remodify, print, merge with other spreadsheets and so on). Right now all I can offer them is a simple "Export to CSV" which they can then open in Excel and play with as they like - however this obviously loses all formatting. Is there any easyway I can create "rich" Excel files (e.g. with Bolded columns, some rows in red and so on) on the fly using ASP or some sort of allied technology?

Heartless · 26 Jul 2005, 15:00

You might want to take a look at the Excel DOM. It is a monster, yes, but since you are using ASP it is to access anyways.
Not sure if it requires MS Office to be installed, though ... coding ASP was a long time ago.

Caesar2 · 26 Jul 2005, 18:15

You can use this at the beginning of your page:

Code:

<% 
   Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel"
%>

queball · 26 Jul 2005, 19:17

From a quick google,
If they have at least Office 97: http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q301044
If they have Office 2003, you could use the new Excel XML format and just print out your data in a clumsy yet simple manner.

Or if you want to generate a .XLS file you can use CreateObject("Excel.Application") and save a workbook to a file. (Heartless: did you mean COM rather than DOM?)

Heartless · 27 Jul 2005, 00:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by queball

Or if you want to generate a .XLS file you can use CreateObject("Excel.Application") and save a workbook to a file. (Heartless: did you mean COM rather than DOM?)

Yeah, I meant COM, sorry. Been a bit busy with Javascript lately, so I mixed the two abbreviations, my bad. It is pretty similar to each other anyways.