Topics

With ExcelWriter, there is often more than one way to do something, and these different techniques can have tradeoffs in terms of complexity and performance.

This topics section offers best practices and guides to compliment the tutorials section. While the tutorials focuses on how to do something, the topics section focuses on when you use certain techniques, and why.

Preprocessing vs. Postprocessing

ExcelApplication can be used to either preprocess or post process Workbooks. It is important to know when each approach should be used to achieve best performance.

How ExcelWriter Inserts Rows

ExcelWriter interacts with existing Workbook content in two possible ways when importing data.

Effective Use of Styles

Using one of these two techniques to apply styles will use less memory than creating a new style for each cell or modifying the Cell.Style property directly.

Best Practices with Large Reports

It is important to understand that the memory required to process a large report is much greater than the size of eventual output file.

SharePoint Solution - Excel Export Plus

Excel Export Plus is a SharePoint solution that demonstrates a usage of the OfficeWriter API in SharePoint. This solution adds a new ribbon button to SharePoint lists, allowing you to export the list data to a pre-formatted Excel template that can be designed in Excel or automatically generated by Excel Export Plus.

Switching from XLS to XLSX or XLSM

In ExcelWriter 8, support for the new Open Office XML (OOXML) file formats (XLSX, XLSM) was introduced in ExcelApplication. Since XLSX files have different file format defaults and a different file structure than XLS, ExcelWriter's behavior can change between the two file formats in specific situations. These differences are outlined below.

Intro to PivotTables

A PivotTable is an interactive table which allows the user to transpose, filter, sort, and aggregate large amounts of data into a single table format. ExcelWriter works with PivotTables in two ways: include a PivotTable in an ExcelTemplate template file or manipulate PivotTables programmatically with ExcelApplication. This article provides a brief overview on the functionality of PivotTables.

What is Hot Cell Technology?

ExcelWriter's HotCell Technology provides the ability to dynamically retrieve or update data on a Web server based on modifications made in an Excel file on a client. HotCell Technology uses Excel VBA code embedded in the spreadsheet on the client.

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