How to process excel files without installing/using MS Office Excel

I can't really help with this (not an Excel guy) but can certainly suggest that without more specific information about what you mean by "process xls and/or xlsx files", help's unlikely to appear.

Are you trying to avoid using Excel altogether and just go from xml to xml or ???

I have evaluated several options. One very powerful and actively supported solution is the EPPlus wrapper over the Excel XML lib.  You can use EPPlus to read, write, and create charts. 

Tried using COM+ calls to the Excel application, however dealing w/ COM is a headache.  Hope this helps.

Rgds

Todd

Hello, Rohn007:

Thanks for your reply.

I found out about OpenXML SDK soon after I posted this question.

I'm going to try that out today.

We can't install Excel on server so we need something like CarlogAg or OpenXML SDK.

Hello, Steve:

Thanks for your reply.

I found out about OpenXML SDK soon after I posted this question.

I'm going to try that out today.

We can't install Excel on server so we need something like CarlogAg or OpenXML SDK.

What sort of processing do you want to do?

You will need some sort of program that supports XLSX format files.

Here are some free/cheap alternatives to Office and Excel

Office Suite Alternatives

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2013 10 01- 10 comparisons between Google Apps and Office 365

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/google-in-the-enterprise/10-comparisons-between-google-apps-and-office-365/

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2013 07 24- Cost breakdown toolkit: Google Apps vs. Office 365

http://www.techproresearch.com/article/cost-breakdown-toolkit-google-apps-vs-office-365/

Topics discussed include hosted email, mobile email from an array of devices, ability to host a public website, ability to use a company’s own domain name and email addresses, ability to manage user accounts, calendar sharing, encrypted connectivity for security, 24/7 phone support, and a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee.

The cost analysis includes a toolkit in the download to allow for quick comparisons of Google Apps for Business, Google Apps Vault, Office 365 Small Business, Office 365 Small Business Premium, Office 365 Midsize Business, Office 365 Enterprise E1, Office 365 Enterprise E3, and Office 365 Enterprise E4.

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2011 08 29- Google Apps vs. Office 365 vs. Zoho Docs: Cloud-Based Office Suites Showdown

https:// www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/236722/google_apps_vs_office_365_vs_zoho_docs_cloudbased_office_suites_showdown.html#tk.nl_bpx_h_cbintro

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2013 08 28- Help migrate users from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice 4.1

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/smb-technologist/help-migrate-users-from-microsoft-office-to-libreoffice-41

<snip>

it will save users the headache of having to learn yet another iteration of the Microsoft Office interface. LibreOffice, held steadfast to the tried and true menu drop-down system.

It won’t take long for your end users to feel comfortable with LibreOffice 4.1 because of the interface. When you break it down, almost every office suite works the same -- it’s how and where you click that makes a difference. But just in case you find the migration a challenge, here are tips to make the process smoother.

</snip>

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2013 08 00- Battle of the Office Suites: Microsoft Office 2013 and LibreOffice 4.1 Compared

http://lifehacker.com/you-may-switch-to-libreoffice-but-the-rest-of-the-busin-1148504264

We’ll spare you the suspense and tell you Microsoft Office won this battle, but only due to one reason. To find out what that is, check out the full article!

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2013 08 00- Feature Comparison: LibreOffice 4.1 - Microsoft Office 2013

https:// wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:_LibreOffice_-_Microsoft_Office

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2013 07 25- Two days after OpenOffice 4, LibreOffice 4.1 is released

http://www.ghacks.net/2013/07/25/two-days-after-openoffice-4-libreoffice-4-1-is-released/

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2013 03 13- Two free, full-blown alternatives to MS Office - Open Office / Libre Office

https:// windowssecrets.com/newsletter/two-free-full-blown-alternatives-to-ms-office/

As Microsoft’s Office has grown in size and complexity, more than a few users have wondered whether there’s a viable alternative — especially when it comes time to pay for an upgrade or new copy.

<snip> After using both for a couple weeks, I didn’t notice any major features missing in either. Writer is a capable word processor that does pretty much everything Word can do and more. In fact, we picked Writer as the best word processor for Windows. If a word processor is all you really need, then Writer will do everything Word can do and more.

…

If you’re new to spreadsheets or just a light user, Calc gets the job done. However, if you’re working in an environment where you’re sharing a lot of macros then you’re best off sticking with Excel. Both of them are easy to get started with, support the same file formats, and offer a pretty close selection of features.

….

LibreOffice’s Impress is a perfectly capable program, but if you’re working with people who usually use PowerPoint you might run into some compatibility issues still. If you’re just making presentations for your own purposes, then Impress should work for you.

…

Unlike the rest of the software in the suite, database software is really more about what you and your company use. Base has fantastic integration with MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Thunderbird, whereas Access integrates better with Outlook and Paradox. Both manage to do what they need to do well, so which you use really depends on the context you use it in.

….

For the most part, LibreOffice and Microsoft Office have the same suite of software with the exception of one thing: Outlook. LibreOffice doesn’t come packed with an email client, so if you need Outlook or an equivalent, you won’t find it here. The rest of the suite is pretty similar.

It’s pretty obvious that if money is tight, LibreOffice is the office suite for you. Even still, if Microsoft Office isn’t actually required at your work (especially with Outlook), LibreOffice has a lot to offer these days. LibreOffice also supports extensions, which means you can customize the look, features, and feel of the suite to suit your needs. Fortunately, the two office suites usually play nice together, so if you want to give LibreOffice a try for a few days you should be able to continue working with documents you’ve already created in Microsoft Office (though as stated above, you may run into a few small issues).

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2013 07 16- Geek level comparison of LibreOffice and OpenOffice program code and their future

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/16/libre_office_hardware_acceleration/

Provides overview of underlying code changes to LibreOffice and it’s future use of video card to speed up processing

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LibreOffice 4.0 ships with new features, better looks

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/08/libreoffice_40_ships/

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https:// www.libreoffice.org/download/4-0-new-features-and-fixes 

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Review: LibreOffice 4 liberates you from Microsoft Office

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2042552/review-libreoffice-4-liberates-you-from-microsoft-office.html#tk.rss_all

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LibreOffice 3.5: The best Office killer yet

https:// www.infoworld.com/d/applications/libreoffice-35-the-best-office-killer-yet-187534

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Ultimate Collection of Best Free Alternatives to Microsoft Office Suite

http://www.askvg.com/ultimate-collection-of-best-free-alternatives-to-microsoft-office-suite/   10 superb free tools for all of your basic business needs 2013 01 14

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http://www.pcworld.com/article/252603/the_15_best_free_business_tools_apps_and_services_of_2012.html

15 Best Free Business Tools, Apps, and Services of 2012 – 2012 04 23

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http://www.techhive.com/article/258102/the_best_freeware_for_small_businesses.html

Best Freeware for Small Businesses

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5 Free Open Source Alternatives to Microsoft Office

http://www.cio.com/article/716346/5_Free_Open_Source_Alternatives_to_Microsoft_Office?taxonomyId=3000

Apache OpenOffice  LibreOffice  NeoOffice  Google Docs  KOffice

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2010 09 27- Google spikes old MS file formats - Withdraws support for .doc, .xls, .ppt

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/27/google_kills_old_ms_file_formats/

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Five alternatives to Microsoft Office 365

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-alternatives-to-microsoft-office-365/1860

Zoho, OX, Google Apps, Think Free Office, Live Documents

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2013 04 18- Going Google (apps), Part 1: Move your mail

http://windowssecrets.com/newsletter/going-google-apps-part-1-move-your-mail/

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Part 2: Move your docs

http://windowssecrets.com/newsletter/going-google-apps-part-2-move-your-docs/

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Part 3: Share/collaborate

https:// windowssecrets.com/top-story/going-google-apps-part-3-sharecollaborate/

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2012 12 12- Review: The new Corel Office

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/window-on-windows/review-the-new-corel-office/7017

Winodws 8 compatible, (2010) Ribbonized

Bottom Line: Corel’s reboot of their fabled office suite brings a fresh look to WordPerfect and company. However, unless you are a diehard fan of the brand or work specifically with documents designed with the software, stick with something else.

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Duracell 8GB USB2 with Corel Home Office (full)

http://store.worldstart.com/product/7621

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Windows Live Essentials

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/essentials-other-programs

Mail, Writer, Photo Gallery, Movie maker etc.

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SSuite Office Free – several versions

http://www.ssuitesoft.com/ssuiteofficepremiumhd.htm

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http://www.ssuitesoft.com/wordgraph.htm

• Description of Word processor app

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Ashampoo Office 2010

http://www.ashampoo.com/en/usd/pde/0338/Office_Software/Ashampoo-Office-2010/Details

Textmaker (Word), PlanMaker (Excel) and Presentations (PowerPoint) menu, NOT ribbon, based equivalents. If you sign up for their newsletter they offer software for sale at prices ranging from $5-15 at various times in the year. But at US$40, even full price is cheap.

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2013 05 30- 10 reasons why Kingsoft Office is better than the competition

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10things/10-reasons-why-kingsoft-office-is-better-than-the-competition/3745

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Kingsoft Office Suite 2012

http://www.topshareware.com/Kingsoft-Office-Suite-Free-2012-download-91031.htm

It’s highly compatible with MS Office. Features spell check, a PDF converter, small package size, multi-tab interface, paragraph adjustment tool, drag-and-drop table feature, group convert hyperlinks and more.

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Excel Alternatives

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Free Spreadsheet Alternatives to Microsoft Excel

http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/biztools/article.php/3939366/4-Free-Spreadsheet-Alternatives-to-Microsoft-Excel.htm 22-Sep-11

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Excel- R –  command line & GUI driven stats and graphing freeware

http://www.r-project.org/

R is an integrated suite of software facilities for data manipulation, calculation and graphical display. Among other things it has:

·      an effective data handling and storage facility,

·      a suite of operators for calculations on arrays, in particular matrices,

·      a large, coherent, integrated collection of intermediate tools for data analysis,

·      graphical facilities for data analysis and display either directly at the computer or on hardcopy, and

·      a well developed, simple and effective programming language (called ‘S’) which includes conditionals, loops, user defined recursive functions and input and output facilities. (Indeed most of the system supplied functions are themselves written in the S language.)

The term “environment” is intended to characterize it as a fully planned and coherent system, rather than an incremental accretion of very specific and inflexible tools, as is frequently the case with other data analysis software.

R is very much a vehicle for newly developing methods of interactive data analysis. It has developed rapidly, and has been extended by a large collection of packages. However, most programs written in R are essentially ephemeral, written for a single piece of data analysis.

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MSAGL - Download Automatic Graph Layout Setup File - Free

http://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/58-visual-studio-direct-download-links

MSAGL is a .NET tool for graph layout and viewing. It was developed in Microsoft Research by Lev Nachmanson. MSAGL is built on the principle of the Sugiyama scheme; it produces so called layered, or hierarchical layouts. This kind of a layout naturally applies to graphs with some flow of information. For example, the graph could represent a control flow graph of a program, a state machine, or a C++ class hierarchy.

Microsoft Automatic Graph Layout is a .NET Library for drawing graphs. It was available on Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace in the past, but now Microsoft is giving it away free of charge. Therefore, feel free to download it from Digital River and use it. There’s no activation needed.

The package contains the following:

·      Layout engine (Microsoft.MSAGL.dll) - The core layout functionality. This component can be used directly in cases when visualization is handled by a tool other than MSAGL.

·      Drawing module (Microsoft.MSAGL.Drawing.dll) - The Definitions of different drawing attributes like colors, line styles, etc. It also contains definitions of a node class, an edge class, and a graph class. By using these classes a user can create a graph object and use it later for layout, and rendering.

·      Viewer control (Microsoft.MSAGL.GraphViewerGDIGraph.dll) - The viewer control, and  some other rendering functionality.

Some important features of the viewer are:

·      Pan and Zoom of the graph.

·      Forward and Backward navigation.

·      Ability to configure tooltips and highlighting of graph entities.

·      Ability to search for and focus on entities of the graph.

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Using Microsoft Automatic Graph Layout

You can use Automatic Graph Layout to represent complex directed graphs, such as those found in business management, manufacturing, and network analysis, as well as phylogenetic trees, which are used in bioinformatics research.

Automatic Graph Layout includes three integrated components:

·      An automatic layout engine that simplifies creating aesthetically pleasing graphs with thousands of nodes that are easy to understand.

·      A drawing layer that enables you to modify the attributes of the graphical components, such as the color of nodes and the style of edges.

·      A Windows-based viewer that uses the engine and drawing layer to create interactive graphs.

With the viewer, you can edit graphs by dragging nodes around and modifying edge curves, capture mouse events such as hover, click to get properties of nodes and edges, zoom in and pan out to interact with graphs of all size, and more.

Creating a complex graph typically takes just three steps:

1.   Create the graph object.

2.   Set the nodes and edges.

3.   Bind the graph object with the viewer.

Automatic Graph Layout includes C# samples that help you draw your first graphs in minutes.****

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<br>Microsoft Automatic Graph Layout	<br>English (USA)	<br>X14-96784.exe (new)

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Microsoft Automatic Graph Layout FAQ

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/bb968861.aspx

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Google Graphing

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/are-you-sure-you-know-how-to-use-google/

You can also use Google to draw graphs, from simple ones to 3D ones. Enter an equation in the search box and see what happens.

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