Link ASP.NET Data Grid to Microsoft Excel in the client side

• Download source files - 31.7 Kb
• Download VBS file - 1.06 Kb

Introduction

I was playing with internet explorer context menu, suddenly I noted that I have menu item called "export to Microsoft Excel".

When I clicked on this command it is transferred the contents of the selected table to Microsoft excel.

How did I steal the code?

To guess what was happing on when I clicked on the context menu item, I used the IE feature, break at next statement (from menu item choose View-> Script Debugger->Break at Next Statement ), and made a small table and as I clicked on the menu and I got the VBScript file in Visual Studio .NET.

How did I link the datagrid with the script?

I have used something called HTC "HTML Components" which is a good thing to learn if you are developing an ASP.NET Server Control. My HTC script is divided in to two parts :

• First one is how to display a small icon near the datagrid, and that was by
  1. creating HTML image object.

     ImgaElement=this.document.createElement("img")

  2. putting the image near the datagrid table.

     ImgaElement.style.top=this.element.offsetTop-3 
     ImgaElement.style.left=this.element.offsetLeft+offsetWidth-3

• And the second part is how to plug it to the Microsoft Excel. In this task I did not do anything new but converting the VBS file to JavaScript one and add additional lines for checking the security settings.

  try 
  {
         xlApp= new ActiveXObject("Excel.Application"); 
  } 
  catch(e) 
  {
      alert("Please check the Internet security setting");
          return -1;
  }

How to use it?

• An important note before using the component is, to enable the "Initialize and script ActiveX controls not marked as safe"

  

  in the security tab in the internet security settings.

• Copy the images and the HTC folders to your web project.
• Add a the DLL file (DataGridProject.dll) to your references and to the Toolbox controls.