I want to allow an Excel report to be viewed embedded in a WebPage... is there a way?
I don't want to use an ActiveX, or OWC (Office Web Components), I just want to open an existing file from the internet explorer application.
I don't want users to download and then open it.
Using an iframe wouldn't be a problem, but my preliminary tests weren't successful
Any ideas? Is it at all possible?
I think your best bet is going to be extracting the data out of the Excel file and displaying it in a regular HTML table. Excel isn't exactly safe to invoke from a web page and not everyone has it anyway.
<iframe src="file:\\yourpath\yourfile.xls" width="100%" height="500"></iframe>
in your comments you say that the Excel file is on the client's filesystem, not on the webserver. i think the security model of sane browsers forbid this; but wouldn't be surprised if setting high permissions to your pages could allow this.
This has to do with the local person's browser set up and not really anything you can do on your end. If they click a link with the .xls(x) extension, the browser determines if it wants to open it itself or in a new window.
Here is a microsoft page on how to change these settings: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/162059
Take a look at scribd iPaper Viewer - this is a Flash based Viewer of XLS (and other) docs.
MOSS 2007 has a nifty feature called Excel Services which might fit the bill...
Well this is a bit crude but sort of fits the bill.
1 Select the area of the spreadsheet you wish to display. 2 Copy this area into MS Paint. 3 Select the area in Paint and use the Edit/Copy to/ function to save this as a bitmap. 4 Now load the bitmap as you woukd any other pic.