create spreadsheet using Win32 api

Question

I have a program that outputs some results. I would like to add this facility:

• customers launch it and get a new set of results
• the results are compared with a base set
• the curve is presented in an excel file

The program is written in C. Is there a way to generate a spreadsheet on the fly?

Answer 1

Hello,

As you said, VBA is installed with Office. But it is hard to generate a document on a PC that does not have Office installed. That is: It depends on the Excel components (COM Components) to generate an Excel document unless you understand Excel file storage formats.

Cheers,

Cristin

Answer 2

Hi,

thank you for taking the time to answer this question. Most likely, VBA is installed with Office. What I want is to generate the document on the fly on a machine that does not have Office installed.

It is not  a critical feature for the product.

Regards,

Calin

Answer 3

Hi,

It's hard to create a spreadsheet using Windows APIs in C programming language.

But it's more convenient if you use Office runtime libraries, see below example using VBS:

    Dim xlApp

    Dim xlWb

    Set xlApp = CreateObject("Excel.Application")

    xlApp.Visible = False

    Set xlWb = xlApp.Workbooks.Add

    Set xlSht = xlWb.Worksheets.Add

    xlSht.Cells(1, 1) = "This is Cell A1"

    xlWb.SaveAs ("D:\newSheet.xlsx")

    xlApp.Quit

Assuming that you have copied the above code to Notepad and saved it as "xxx.vbs", then you can double-click the file and see a new spreadsheet will be generated in "D:" directory.

Cheers,

Cristin