Can a standalone .exe be created from an excel file which has a few forms and macros?
+4
A:
Standalone as in "the user doesn't have to have Excel installed"? No. It's still an Excel file; it needs Excel to be available to run it.
You may be able to get away with the Excel viewer though. Worth a try, if you're worried about licensing costs. It won't let you edit data though, which may well include forms... you'd have to try it to be sure.
Jon Skeet
2009-09-02 06:11:32
A:
Maybe an Excel viewer would be an option? I'm not sure how much support there would be for macros, etc.
Antony
2009-09-02 06:13:52
Along those lines, Open Office might be an option as well http://www.openoffice.org/
Eric J.
2009-09-02 06:19:43
@Eric: The macro and form requirement won't go well with OpenOffice.org (unless it is a native OOo solution).
0xA3
2009-09-02 06:56:35
A:
SpreadsheetGear for .NET includes a Windows Forms control into which you can load an Excel workbook. The Excel workbook becomes part of the Windows Forms application (it is embedded in the .exe).
The bad news is that SpreadsheetGear will not execute your macros so you will have to rewrite them to the SpreadsheetGear API. The good news is that the SpreadsheetGear API is very similar to the Excel API.
Disclaimer: I own SpreadsheetGear LLC
Joe Erickson
2009-09-02 20:23:35