Anybody know of a good 3rd Party grid control that supports AutoFill (like Excel does). Also a good export to Excel and import (paste) from Excel would be handy also. I'm mainly interested in a WinForms grid that can do this, but would also be curious if there is a Silverlight grid or ActiveX grid with AutoFill capabilities.
+1
A:
If you are going to be providing 'export to Excel and import (paste) from Excel ' then does that mean that you're delivering to an environment where your users have a guaranteed installation of Excel on their machines? If so, you could look at using Excel itself as the grid you want, either via a VSTO project or by perhaps embedding an Excel sheet as a control a WinForm? The latter might require jumping through a few interop hoops but I think it's still possible.
Obviously, if it's not guaranteed that all your users will have Excel on their machines then you can disregard my answer ;-)
AdamRalph
2009-02-09 00:27:57
Actually, I would be looking to downplay the Excel functionality over time if the grid had AutoFill. I'm trying to get users to really just use Excel as a final presentation tool and a "what-if" analysis engine. I'm not crazy about the export to get autofill and then re-importing (copy/pasting).
tyndall
2009-02-09 16:58:13
Hope that helped. But yes, all users will have Excel 2007. Can you really interact with an Excel Sheet if you embed it in a WinForm?
tyndall
2009-02-12 04:12:54
I'm still a little miffed Microsoft stopped the development of the OFfice Web Components. I wonder what this Office 14 for the web is going to use for the grid. Guess I'll have to watch the PDC video.
tyndall
2009-02-12 04:15:02
My VSTO idea was more about moving the whole UI into Excel and out of Winforms but it sounds like that doesn't make sense in this case. As for the second option, I know interaction with embedded Excel in a form was possible pre .NET but not sure about .NET WinForms, would be interesting to find out.
AdamRalph
2009-02-12 08:04:18
+1
A:
SpreadsheetGear for .NET is an Excel compatible spreadsheet control for WinForms which can also be used in ASP.NET applications. It supports autofill (drag fill with mouse as well as API) which is compatible with Excel as well as a Data Series command / UI / API which handles more complex cases including linear and growth trends, dates / times, etc...
SpreadsheetGear also supports reading from, writing to xls and xlsx as well as clipboard support (Cut, Copy & Paste) which can handle Excel content on the Windows clipboard.
We do not have a SpreadsheetGear for Silverlight control yet - but that is a high priority for the future.
You can download the free trial here if you want to give it a try.
Disclaimer: I own SpreadsheetGear LLC
Joe Erickson
2009-07-09 16:43:24
Thanks. This is exactly what I was looking for. Will take it for a test drive this weekend.
tyndall
2009-07-09 17:28:10