Are there no .NET grid components that emulate Excel?!?

[Nathan]

A couple of months ago, I went looking for a .NET grid component with
what I thought was pretty simple criteria - I wanted an interface that
provided my users with Excel-like data entry capability. My users
(mostly scientists) use Excel for just about everything and like how
quick and easy it is to manipulte tabular data in Excel. For example,
a partial list of data-entry features provided by Excel:
- Copy/paste from one cell to many
- Copy/paste block of data
- Fill down/across (which option to increment numbers)
- Quick navigation with tab/enter keys, automatic edit when begin
typing
.... (etc)

I've looked at the following vendors (chosen because they have good
marketing departments i.e. they have ads in the .NET mags I read) and
haven't found anything that emulates Excel:

Infragistics
ComponentOne
SyncFusion
FarPoint
XceedSoft

My users have started asking why I can't make the grids in my apps more
like Excel, which after all is a Microsoft product. I don't want to
spend my time on the "plumbing" to emulate Excel, but may have to.

Is anybody else in this position and/or frustrated that there is no 3rd
party .NET grid that emulates Excel?

 

[Bob Grommes]

ISTR that there is a .NET library out there that provides Excel-like
functionality. Perhaps your mistake is in Googling for a "grid" or
"datagrid". I don't believe that was the term this product was marketed
under; it was a "spreadsheet control" or something of that nature.

It may also be possible to do some sort of in-place activation of Excel
itself within your app, via the PIAs.

--Bob

 

[Jeremy Williams]

What was there about FarPoint Spread that did not work for you? That is the
most spreadsheet-like grid I know of on the commercial market. I doubt any
component will match Excel feature for feature (Excel has a relatively huge
development staff and many years head-start on most component development
shops), but many of them would make a great starting point.

 

[Earl]

My vote is for Spread also. Not sure what you cannot do with Spread that you
cannot do with Excel -- and then some.

 

[Peter N Roth]

In addition to the other suggestions, consider using
Excel directly via VSTO.

--
Grace + Peace,
Peter N Roth
Engineering Objects International
http://engineeringobjects.com
Home of Matrix.NET

 

[Rob]

If you are interested in the "plumbing", a good start would be the
SourceGrid
open source code located on "The Code Project" website and its free.

 

[Guest]

My users have started asking why I can't make the grids in my apps more
like Excel, which after all is a Microsoft product. I don't want to
spend my time on the "plumbing" to emulate Excel, but may have to.

Is anybody else in this position and/or frustrated that there is no 3rd
party .NET grid that emulates Excel?

You might want to take a look at this. It's an activeX host container, and
supports almost everything in Excel. THe only omission I've noticed is that
change tracking is disabled. I'm not sure if it's a default off or
nonsupported feature. Since the demo app's vb6 I could see either applying
because of it's age. The vb doesn't port cleanly to .net. Printing and web
file opening don't compile and the menu on/off items are broken.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;311765

 

[Nathan]

Thank you, everyone, for your helpful replies.

I agree, FarPoint Spread is the closest thing I find to Excel
functionality. But for all its functionality it lacks some of the
details that make Excel so good for data manipulation. For example:
- copy/paste from one cell to many (my users specifically asked for
this one). They do have a Fill command, which is nice but not quite as
efficient as copy/paste for power users.
- Using Shift+Ctrl+Arrow keys to quickly highlight a block of text (for
copy/paste and delete operations).

I know I'm being picky here, but these details can really make a
difference when you are entering a lot of data through an application.

I'll take a closer look at hosting Excel directly in my app through
automation. But it won't support data-binding (to ADO.Net tables) and
I suspect it will be non-trivial to fill/update manually from a
database.

 

[Guest]

Hi

You could use OWC11(office web controls), but you need office to run these
on the target machine.

regards

ronnie

 

[Donald]

Hi Nathan,

Thanks for your posting. I have entered these as enhancement requests.
I'll see if we can add them to the next release. Spread for Windows
Forms v2 includes many additional Excel behaviors over the previous
versions of Spread using our input maps. Yes, there are still some
things that we need to add, like the poweruser features that you
listed.

If you, or anyone, would like to see anything else added, please feel
free to post them here or drop me an email and I'll be happy to
respond.

Donald
Spread Product Manager
FarPoint Technologies