View Spreadsheet without excel

[Shako]

Hi

is there a way to view an excel spreadsheet without having excel installed?

and a way to display it in CVI ?

[ebalci]

You can use the excelreport library to open and read the file.

Then you can display the data on a table on CVI user interface.

Search for excelreport.fp file in your CVI installation and browse through the sample code already provided in CVI examples folder.

[Shako]

The problem is that there are charts and things which are in the template.

Plus dont you need excel to use that library?

[ebalci]

Yes, of course you need Excel.

Unfortunately, there is not another straightforward method to read from an Excel file.

Library is just a software interface to Excel application.

It provides methods to launch an invisible instance of Excel, load the file and read/write from/to the file.

Do you want to parse an Excel file without installing Excel?

That's not practical.

[RobertoBozzolo]

I do not know wether it is possible or not, but Microsoft distributes a free Excel viewer that permits to see and print Excel files on a system without the regular product installed. It is possible that the viewer has an ActiveX interface that you may access, or it could be interfaced via DDE, that permits some limited control over the application.