Export Dataset to Excel from ASP.NET

Export Dataset to Excel from ASP.NET demonstrates exporting a DataSet to Excel in ASP.NET, without using the Excel object model. We did not want to install Office on the server just to get the ability to create an Excel spreadsheet.

Whats so special about this? Well, of all of the online samples we could find, none of them had any way to create multiple Worksheet tabs within the spreadsheet without using the Excel object model. Trying to fit multiple tables in a single Worksheet causes several interesting and unnacceptable formatting problems, not to mention difficulties in finding precisely the data that was desired.

This is accomplished by building and returning an XML file which is created programmatically, in an Excel-readable format. Once this file is built, it is written directly to the Response stream, and the Response ContentType and appropriate HTTP headers are set to indicate that the pages output is an Excel spreadsheet.

The resulting spreadsheet will contain a seperate Worksheet for every table in the Dataset. The Worksheet will be named the same as the corresponding Table.

This demonstration project returns all of the data in all tables of the Northwind database on the local server.