How do you use Excel server-side?

Question

A client wants to \"Web-enable\" a spreadsheet calculation -- the user to specify the values of certain cells, then show them the resulting values in other cells.

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Answer 1

It is possible, but not advisable (and officially unsupported).

You can interact with Excel through COM or the .NET Primary Interop Assemblies, but this is meant to be a client-side process.

On the server side, no display or desktop is available and any unexpected dialog boxes (for example) will make your web app hang – your app will behave flaky.

Also, attaching an Excel process to each request isn't exactly a low-resource approach.

Working out the black box and re-implementing it in a proper programming language is clearly the better (as in "more reliable and faster") option.

Related reading: KB257757: Considerations for server-side Automation of Office