A friend of mine has a very complex Excel spreadsheet with many formulas and lots of data that he uses for work. He wants to put a custom GUI on top of it and then wants to sell it to other people in his profession. Basically he wants to make some freestanding software out of his spreadsheet? Is there any way to put a custom GUI on top of an Excel spread sheet? The spreadsheet would just reside in the backend and be a kind of database and do the calculations necessary. I know this is definitely not an elegant solution but I told him I'd look into it. Any ideas?
A:
Excel Interop fits the bill. Code your GUI with WinForms/WPF and .NET; invoke excel in the background to be your calculation engine. Pretty ugly (and probably slow) solution, though.
Mark
2010-09-21 19:21:43
A:
SpreadsheetGear for .NET is an Excel compatible spreadsheet component which will help you create WinForms or ASP.NET applications from an Excel workbook.
You can download the free trial here if you want to try it out on your workbook(s).
Disclaimer: I own SpreadsheetGear LLC
Joe Erickson
2010-09-21 19:39:54
A:
I use Clear Office.
You can host workbooks in your GUI, host GUI in your workbook. All .NET, no interop.
A:
Check out the book Professional Excel Development by Bovey. It talks about how to do some radical Excel customizations along the lines of what you are suggesting.
That doesn't look right
2010-09-22 23:29:58