Essential XlsIO: Read/Write Excel files from .NET

Essential XlsIO
Read/Write Excel files from .NET
100x faster than Office automation

XlsIO

Essential XlsIO is a .NET library that can read and write Microsoft Excel files. It features a full-fledged object model similar to the Microsoft Office Automation libraries. It can be used on systems that do not have Microsoft Excel installed, making it an excellent report engine for tabular data. Essential XlsIO enables users to create document-based reports in Windows forms, WPF, ASP.NET Webforms, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight, WinRT, Windows Phone, Universal and Xamarin applications.

Blazing Fast Performance. 100x faster than Office automation.
Essential XlsIO has been optimized for usage on servers where speed and memory usage are critical. It can easily handle multiple requests for report generation in scenarios such as web sites serving reports to hundreds of simultaneous users. Essential XlsIO is also highly optimized to generate Excel files with a large amount of data. It is optimized for both low memory usage and speed. It works more than 100 times faster than Excel automation and consumes much less memory compared to that of Excel.

Easily Migrate from Office Automation
If you have code that's already written using Office automation, it is very easy to migrate that code to XlsIO since the APIs are very similar. However the similarity ends there; XlsIO is more than 100 times faster than Office automation.

Compatible with Microsoft Excel Versions 97 to 2013
Essential XlsIO can read and write files based on all popular Excel file format variants including XLS and XLSX. You can even open a file in one format and save it back in another format.

No Server Deployment Fees
There are no distribution fees, per-server licensing fees, or royalties, making XlsIO very cost-effective.

Start Reports with Excel and Finish with XlsIO
Let designers visually design reports using Microsoft Excel, and then use Essential XlsIO to populate it with dynamic data during run time, to generate an invoice for example. You can save the final report to a local file, stream, stream it to the client browser, or even export to other formats we support.

Consume Data Stored in Excel Workbooks
When you read an existing Excel document using XlsIO, the entire document is parsed and available for manipulation through its object model. This makes consuming data stored in Excel documents as simple as loading a workbook and accessing the data through XlsIO’s intuitive object model.

Powerful and comprehensive API
All of the elements in a typical Excel file like the cell values, formatting, images, charts and pivot tables are accessible through XlsIO’s comprehensive set of API’s. This makes it possible to create richly formatted Excel files as well as extract any desired piece of information in an existing Excel file.

Formatting Cells
There are API’s available to read and write cell formatting options like text color, number formatting, cell background etc. It is also possible to work with named styles to format content.



Formulas
XlsIO lets you read/write the formula in a cell and the computed value. It also has its own formula evaluation engine that lets you edit some cell values and retrieve the computed formulas from other cells.

Easily import and export data
Essential XlsIO provides several utility methods to work with common data sources. It only takes one line of code to import an Array, Data Table, Data View, Data Column, and Business Objects into a worksheet.



Template Marker
Template markers are special placeholder values inserted in an Excel template that later gets replaced with actual data when processed dynamically using XlsIO. One possible use case is to let end users design their own reports and then dynamically merge with actual data. This functionality is very similar to the mail merge functionality available in Microsoft Word.

Charts
Essential XlsIO has advanced support for creating and modifying Excel charts inside a workbook. Charts can be created as an embedded chart (chart is embedded inside a worksheet) or as a chart worksheet (chart is a separate worksheet). Several formatting options are available to customize the look and feel of such charts as well.


Conditional Formatting
XlsIO lets you define the conditional formatting rules and also specify the formatting options for the cells when these conditions are met.

Data Validation
Essential XlsIO allows you to add data validation rules to a cell. This is valuable when you want the data entered in the workbook to be accurate and consistent. You can restrict data entry to a certain range of dates, limit choices by using a list, or make sure that only positive whole numbers are entered.



Sorting
It is possible to dynamically sort a given range of cells in a worksheet.

Encryption and Decryption
By using Password Encryption in Essential XlsIO, you can secure the data in your reports and make it impossible for anyone to view the workbook without the password. There are also several other options available to restrict specific user actions like inserting, formatting, and deleting rows. This feature is not applicable for Xamarin.



Workbook and Worksheet Protection
Essential XlsIO lets you add Workbook Protection to protect a workbook's structure or windows. By protecting the structure, you can prevent the user from moving the workbooks around, inserting new ones, etc. By protecting the windows in the workbook, you can control the size of the workbook, etc. Essential XlsIO has support for adding Worksheet Protection. This prevents the end user from editing the contents of the worksheet while optionally letting the end users perform some operations on the worksheet like format cells, etc. This feature is not applicable for Xamarin.

Document Properties
Document Properties are named values that provide information about the document, such as the date and time at which the document was last saved, the last user to modify the document, and so on. The built-in document properties such as Application Name, Document Title, Category, Keywords, Company, etc. can be set for the documents using Essential XlsIO. It is also possible to set custom document properties as well.



Tables
Tables let you better analyze tabular data with features like sorting, filtering, summary row, etc. Essential XlsIO provides API’s for reading and writing tables.


Named Ranges
Named Ranges are a powerful feature in Excel, which makes it possible to assign a name to a group of cells. XlsIO has APIs for inserting new named ranges into workbooks, and also to read existing named ranges. Named Ranges are mainly used in formulas.


Pivot Table
When there is a need to summarize large and complex reports, Excel allows you to summarize data through pivot tables. A comprehensive set of APIs are included to create and customize the look and feel and behavior of pivot tables within Excel. Bind the pivot table to data, define fields based on which you want to support pivoting, and even specify the default fields the pivot should load with.

Convert to CSV, PDF and HTML
It is also possible to export the Excel file to other common formats like CSV, PDF and HTML. Conversion to Pdf and Html are supported in Windows forms, WPF, ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC only.



Viewing and Editing with Spreadsheet Control

Essential Spreadsheet allows you to import contents from an Excel file (.xls or .xlsx), edit, and save them to the Excel file. All common features you expect from Excel are supported including formula editing and automatic computation, conditional formatting, rich text formatting, etc. Essential Spreadsheet is applicable for WPF and Silverlight only.