Create spreadsheet program

[Guest]

I am trying to decide whether I should buy Visual Basic.NET Standard. I’d like to know the answer to the following questions to help me decide

1. Can I use Visual Basic.NET Standard to create a spreadsheet program? I don’t need all the functionality of Excel (other than some formatting, using some formulas, adding/deleting rows/cells, and printing)

2. Would someone that has Excel be able to open a spreadsheet created in my program

3. Would I need to use Visual Studio.NET Professional instead?

4. Would creating a spreadsheet program be a mammoth task? Should I instead use an Excel COM add-in, and if so can I use .NET Standard to create a COM add-in

Thank you for your help.

 

[William Ryan eMVP]

1) Yes
2) If you used Excel as the FileFormat, or manipulated everythign through
excel, then yes. There's no such thing as a "Spreadsheet' program per se.
You can use the existing Excel libraries for instance, write your own or use
a third party tool
3) No
4) Depends on what you need it to do and what you call Mammoth. In
general, using teh Excel object library is no more difficult than using one
you or someone else wrote - and in many instances it's easier b/c of the
coherent and well documented (tons of books on the subject) object model
plus you can record macros and use that code (although it often needs some
modification) to get you over points that you can't figure out yourself

With that said, Far Point www.fpoint.com has a product called spread. I
personally love it. It gives you a very powerful spreadsheet interface for
both the web and the desktop and supports most everythign you normally do in
excel. You can write the output to excel's file format (ie you can open it
w/ Excel) and you don't need Excel to be installed on the machine that's
running your program like you do if you use INterop. If you go to
www.xtras.net you can get a subscription which is very cool/cheap for what
you get and you'll get a sizable discount on spread which will more than
pay for the subscription. Highly recommend both.

HTH,

Bill

--
W.G. Ryan MVP Windows - Embedded

http://forums.devbuzz.com
http://www.knowdotnet.com/dataaccess.html
http://www.msmvps.com/williamryan/

I am trying to decide whether I should buy Visual Basic.NET Standard. I'd

like to know the answer to the following questions to help me decide:

1. Can I use Visual Basic.NET Standard to create a spreadsheet program? I

don't need all the functionality of Excel (other than some formatting, using
some formulas, adding/deleting rows/cells, and printing).

2. Would someone that has Excel be able to open a spreadsheet created in my program?

3. Would I need to use Visual Studio.NET Professional instead?

4. Would creating a spreadsheet program be a mammoth task? Should I

instead use an Excel COM add-in, and if so can I use .NET Standard to create
a COM add-in?