I\'m looking to export data to excel from Delphi without having to own a copy of excel, is this possible?
N.B. CSV will not do.
I believe it's possible to create MS Office documents as HTML. You don't need to open them in a web browser then or anything, the file can still have the extension .xls and open in Excel like normal.
I just created a new spreadsheet and stuck the numbers 1-3 in the first three cells of column A, and saved it as HTML. There was a bunch of extra mess that probably isn't all necessary. I stripped out as much as I could, here's what looks to be the bare minimum to produce a working spreadsheet.
Try creating a new text file with this as its contents, and save it with a .xls extension.
<html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<x:ExcelWorkbook>
<x:ExcelWorksheets>
<x:ExcelWorksheet>
<x:Name>Sheet1</x:Name>
<x:WorksheetOptions>
<x:Selected/>
<x:Panes>
<x:Pane>
<x:Number>3</x:Number>
<x:ActiveRow>3</x:ActiveRow>
</x:Pane>
</x:Panes>
<x:ProtectContents>False</x:ProtectContents>
<x:ProtectObjects>False</x:ProtectObjects>
<x:ProtectScenarios>False</x:ProtectScenarios>
</x:WorksheetOptions>
</x:ExcelWorksheet>
</x:ExcelWorksheets>
</x:ExcelWorkbook>
</xml><![endif]-->
</head>
<body>
<table x:str>
<tr>
<td x:num width=64>1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td x:num>2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td x:num>3</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
SMExport from Scalabium (scalabium.com) includes lots of formats, including Excel format with or without having Excel installed.