How to output an Excel xls file from classic ASP

Question

I have a number of generated html tables that I need to output as an Excel file  The site is codded in classic ASP  Is this possible  Could it be done by somehow using the Open Office libraries     EDIT  Thus far  I have tried some of the suggestions  but it seems to fail  Ideally  I want the user to be able to click a link that will begin the download of a  xls file  This code    lt    Language VBScript   gt   lt    option explicit  Response ContentType    application vnd ms-excel  Response AppendHeader  content-disposition     filename excelTest xls    gt   lt table gt       lt tr gt           lt th gt Test Col 1 lt  th gt           lt th gt Test Col 2 lt  th gt           lt th gt Test Col 3 lt  th gt           lt th colspan  2  gt Test Col 4 lt  th gt           lt th gt Test Col 6 lt  th gt           lt th gt Test Col 7 lt  th gt       lt  tr gt       lt tr gt           lt td gt Data lt  td gt           lt td gt Data lt  td gt           lt td gt Data lt  td gt           lt td gt Data lt  td gt           lt td gt Data lt  td gt           lt td gt Data lt  td gt           lt td gt Data lt  td gt       lt  tr gt   lt  table gt    seems to fail when IE7 is used to get the page  IE says that it  cannot download excelTest asp  and that  The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found

User · Answer

You can always just export the HTML table to an XLS document. Excel does a pretty good job understanding HTML tables.

Another possiblitly is to export the HTML tables as a CSV or TSV file, but you would need to setup the formatting in your code. This isn't too difficult to accomplish.

There's some classes in the Microsoft.Office.Interop that allow you to create an Excel file programatically, but I have always found them to be a little clumsy. You can find a .NET version of creating a spreadsheet here, which should be pretty easy to modify for classic ASP.

As for .NET, I've always liked CarlosAG's Excel XML Writer Library. It has a nice generator so you can setup your Excel file, save it as an XML spreadsheet and it generates the code to do all the formatting and everything. I know it's not classic ASP, but I thought that I would throw it out there.

With what you're trying above, try adding the header:

"Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=excelTest.xls"

See if that works. Also, I always use this for the content type:

  Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream"
    Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel"

User · Answer

MS made a COM library called Office Web Components to do this   MSOWC dll needs to be registered on the server   It can create and manipulate office document files   How To Use the Spreadsheet Web Component with Visual Basic  Working with the Office Web Components

User · Answer

There s a  cheap and dirty  trick that I have used    shhhh don t tell anyone  If you output tab delimited text and make the file name   xls then Excel opens it without objection  question or warning  So just crank the data out into a text file with tab delimitation and you can open it with Excel or Open Office

User · Answer

MS made a COM library called Office Web Components to do this   MSOWC dll needs to be registered on the server   It can create and manipulate office document files   How To Use the Spreadsheet Web Component with Visual Basic  Working with the Office Web Components

User · Answer

You must specify the file to be downloaded  attachment  by the client in the http header   Response ContentType    application vnd ms-excel  Response AppendHeader  content-disposition    attachment  filename excelTest xls    http   classicasp aspfaq com general how-do-i-prompt-a-save-as-dialog-for-an-accepted-mime-type html

User · Answer

I had the same issue until I added Response Buffer   False   Try changing the code to the following   Response Buffer   False Response ContentType    application vnd ms-excel  Response AddHeader  Content-Disposition    attachment  filename excelTest xls   The only problem I have now is that when Excel opens the file I get the following message   The file you are trying to open   FileName 1  xls   is in a different format than specified by the file extension  Verify that the file is not corrupted and is from a trusted source before opening the file  Do you want to open the file now   When you open the file the data all appears in separate columns  but the spreadsheet is all white  no borders between the cells   Hope that helps

User · Answer

There s a  cheap and dirty  trick that I have used    shhhh don t tell anyone  If you output tab delimited text and make the file name   xls then Excel opens it without objection  question or warning  So just crank the data out into a text file with tab delimitation and you can open it with Excel or Open Office

User · Answer

There s a  cheap and dirty  trick that I have used    shhhh don t tell anyone  If you output tab delimited text and make the file name   xls then Excel opens it without objection  question or warning  So just crank the data out into a text file with tab delimitation and you can open it with Excel or Open Office

User · Answer

You must specify the file to be downloaded  attachment  by the client in the http header   Response ContentType    application vnd ms-excel  Response AppendHeader  content-disposition    attachment  filename excelTest xls    http   classicasp aspfaq com general how-do-i-prompt-a-save-as-dialog-for-an-accepted-mime-type html

User · Answer

There s a  cheap and dirty  trick that I have used    shhhh don t tell anyone  If you output tab delimited text and make the file name   xls then Excel opens it without objection  question or warning  So just crank the data out into a text file with tab delimitation and you can open it with Excel or Open Office

User · Answer

I had the same issue until I added Response Buffer   False   Try changing the code to the following   Response Buffer   False Response ContentType    application vnd ms-excel  Response AddHeader  Content-Disposition    attachment  filename excelTest xls   The only problem I have now is that when Excel opens the file I get the following message   The file you are trying to open   FileName 1  xls   is in a different format than specified by the file extension  Verify that the file is not corrupted and is from a trusted source before opening the file  Do you want to open the file now   When you open the file the data all appears in separate columns  but the spreadsheet is all white  no borders between the cells   Hope that helps

User · Answer

You can always just export the HTML table to an XLS document. Excel does a pretty good job understanding HTML tables.

Another possiblitly is to export the HTML tables as a CSV or TSV file, but you would need to setup the formatting in your code. This isn't too difficult to accomplish.

There's some classes in the Microsoft.Office.Interop that allow you to create an Excel file programatically, but I have always found them to be a little clumsy. You can find a .NET version of creating a spreadsheet here, which should be pretty easy to modify for classic ASP.

As for .NET, I've always liked CarlosAG's Excel XML Writer Library. It has a nice generator so you can setup your Excel file, save it as an XML spreadsheet and it generates the code to do all the formatting and everything. I know it's not classic ASP, but I thought that I would throw it out there.

With what you're trying above, try adding the header:

"Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=excelTest.xls"

See if that works. Also, I always use this for the content type:

  Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream"
    Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel"

User · Answer

It s AddHeader  not AppendHeader    lt    Language VBScript   gt   lt    Option Explicit  Response ContentType    application vnd ms-excel  Response AddHeader  Content-Disposition    attachment  filename excelTest xls    gt   lt table gt       lt tr gt           lt td gt Test lt  td gt       lt  tr gt   lt  table gt    Update  I ve written a blog post about how to generate Excel files in ASP Classic  It contains a rather useful piece of code to generate both xls and csv files

User · Answer

You must specify the file to be downloaded  attachment  by the client in the http header   Response ContentType    application vnd ms-excel  Response AppendHeader  content-disposition    attachment  filename excelTest xls    http   classicasp aspfaq com general how-do-i-prompt-a-save-as-dialog-for-an-accepted-mime-type html

User · Answer

You can always just export the HTML table to an XLS document. Excel does a pretty good job understanding HTML tables.

Another possiblitly is to export the HTML tables as a CSV or TSV file, but you would need to setup the formatting in your code. This isn't too difficult to accomplish.

There's some classes in the Microsoft.Office.Interop that allow you to create an Excel file programatically, but I have always found them to be a little clumsy. You can find a .NET version of creating a spreadsheet here, which should be pretty easy to modify for classic ASP.

As for .NET, I've always liked CarlosAG's Excel XML Writer Library. It has a nice generator so you can setup your Excel file, save it as an XML spreadsheet and it generates the code to do all the formatting and everything. I know it's not classic ASP, but I thought that I would throw it out there.

With what you're trying above, try adding the header:

"Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=excelTest.xls"

See if that works. Also, I always use this for the content type:

  Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream"
    Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel"

User · Answer

You must specify the file to be downloaded  attachment  by the client in the http header   Response ContentType    application vnd ms-excel  Response AppendHeader  content-disposition    attachment  filename excelTest xls    http   classicasp aspfaq com general how-do-i-prompt-a-save-as-dialog-for-an-accepted-mime-type html

User · Answer

You can always just export the HTML table to an XLS document. Excel does a pretty good job understanding HTML tables.

Another possiblitly is to export the HTML tables as a CSV or TSV file, but you would need to setup the formatting in your code. This isn't too difficult to accomplish.

There's some classes in the Microsoft.Office.Interop that allow you to create an Excel file programatically, but I have always found them to be a little clumsy. You can find a .NET version of creating a spreadsheet here, which should be pretty easy to modify for classic ASP.

As for .NET, I've always liked CarlosAG's Excel XML Writer Library. It has a nice generator so you can setup your Excel file, save it as an XML spreadsheet and it generates the code to do all the formatting and everything. I know it's not classic ASP, but I thought that I would throw it out there.

With what you're trying above, try adding the header:

"Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=excelTest.xls"

See if that works. Also, I always use this for the content type:

  Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream"
    Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel"

User · Answer

It s AddHeader  not AppendHeader    lt    Language VBScript   gt   lt    Option Explicit  Response ContentType    application vnd ms-excel  Response AddHeader  Content-Disposition    attachment  filename excelTest xls    gt   lt table gt       lt tr gt           lt td gt Test lt  td gt       lt  tr gt   lt  table gt    Update  I ve written a blog post about how to generate Excel files in ASP Classic  It contains a rather useful piece of code to generate both xls and csv files

[excel] How to output an Excel *.xls file from classic ASP

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