5

I am looking for a spreadsheet control that has feature set nearest to MS Excel.

Currently I am using an ActiveX called FormulaOne but it is a dated control and has features compatible for up to MS Excel 5.

The component can be either ActiveX, .NET component or a Java Bean.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Yogi Yang 007
  • 5,147
  • 10
  • 56
  • 77
  • 1
    you know you can (OLE... today it is called ActiveX) embed Excel, don't you? – sehe Jun 27 '11 at 07:18
  • 4
    What features do you want? Please don't make us spend time answering the question only for you to reject the answer because the components we suggest don't have a feature that is critical for you to have. – David Heffernan Jun 27 '11 at 08:04
  • @sehe Embedding Excel forces the program's user to have an Excel licence. That's one big downside of that approach. – David Heffernan Jun 27 '11 at 08:10
  • It _is_ nearest to excel though. Perhaps the question should not have stressed that part :) – sehe Jun 27 '11 at 08:11
  • 2
    @Yogi We used to use Formula One, but moved to ExpressSpreadsheet a few years ago. Mostly we wanted to get a native VCL component and be free of the tyranny of a binary ActiveX dependency. ExpressSpreadsheet meets our needs but only after we comprehensively re-wrote lots of it to deal with its many weaknesses. It doesn't appear to be under active development and the quality of coding is very low. There's no support (last time I looked) for .xlsx format files which is beginning to hurt us. – David Heffernan Jun 27 '11 at 08:12
  • +1 Actually I want to know this as well. Thanks for asking it. – lkessler Jun 27 '11 at 23:24
  • @sehe, I know it is possible to embed Excel but then my app will be dependent on it and will not run on PC where MS office is not installed. And believe me we have many clients who use Open Office instead of MS Office. – Yogi Yang 007 Jun 29 '11 at 12:52
  • @David, I have checked DevExpress ExpressSpreadsheet but it is truly not usable and we don't have time tweaking it to get it to work and behave as we want esp. after paying for it. – Yogi Yang 007 Jun 29 '11 at 12:58
  • @David, I have evaluated many an options before posting. What I miss the most is Formula Wizard, Cell highlighting in different colors when a user is editing a formula and opening and saving in xlsx format files. Here are a few that I have evaluated: FarPoint Spread, Cell32 and EasyGrid – Yogi Yang 007 Jun 29 '11 at 13:05

2 Answers2

2

I created and led the development of Formula One VBX / ActiveX / Java for more than ten years. I left to start SpreadsheetGear LLC shortly after Actuate acquired Tidestone Technologies in May of 2001.

We released SpreadsheetGear for .NET 1.0 in 2005, added support for xlsx (Excel 2007) workbooks in version 4.0 and added support for Excel 2010 xlsx and xlsm workbooks in version 6.0 last year.

We are confident that you will not find a more Excel compatible spreadsheet component than SpreadsheetGear - but obviously we are biased so you should try it for yourself.

You can learn more here and download a free trial here.

Disclaimer: I own SpreadsheetGear LLC

Joe Erickson
  • 7,077
  • 1
  • 31
  • 31
0

I've used FarPoint Spread back in the day. It is as close to Excel as a component can probably get. Looks like they still sell it and have a new version.

AngryHacker
  • 59,598
  • 102
  • 325
  • 594
  • I have checked FarPoint Spread but yet it still does not have many features that are expected in a spreadsheet control. In fact I would say that FormulaOne is way ahead in-spite of being so old compared to newer versions of Spread. – Yogi Yang 007 Jun 29 '11 at 13:11