Generating Excel Reports from ASP.NET applications

There are plenty of ways to export reports (CSV, Flat file and XML to name a few), but whether you like it or not most people use Excel or open source offerings like Open Office. Excel will open various file formats and you can trick excel by saving CSV files or even html tables with a .xls extension. If you have access to an ms office license, you can access the office com interop objects and generate spreadsheets that way. Lastly and perhaps the neatest of the solutions is to buy one of the out of the box solutions which provide standalone assemblies.