.NET Spreadsheet Components for ASP.NET

Embed Microsoft® Excel®-compatible spreadsheet functionality into your ASP.NET apps with Spread for ASP.NET! Comprehensive Excel document support lets you share information across the enterprise and built-in charting engine and data visualizations let you easily create informative and effective dashboards for advanced business, engineering, and scientific applications.

Spread for ASP.NET delivers:

ASP.NET spreadsheets, stand-alone Chart
Integrated charting engine and data visualizations for informative and effective business dashboards
Comprehensive Excel document support for information sharing across the enterprise

Why use Spread for ASP.NET?

Pioneering ASP.NET Spreadsheet Components

Spread introduced a number of technologies to Microsoft developers, including the first full-featured spreadsheet component for Visual Basic originally called FarPoint Spread, and the first spreadsheet designer. The Microsoft Visual Studio^® .NET versions added an array of new Excel-compatibility features and advanced customization options. ASP.NET spreadsheet components continue to deliver this familiar Excel experience to your end users.
EMBEDDED, PROGRAMMABLE MICROSOFT EXCEL PLATFORM
Import Microsoft Excel documents and preserve complete formatting. Interact with the data in Spread from within your application, then export your spreadsheets to Microsoft Excel for portable distribution to your users. Spread supports the current versions of Excel as well as multiple Excel file formats, including Excel (2007 - current XLSX), Excel 97 (XLS), comma-delimited (CSV), and text (TXT).
Dashboard Data Visualization
The data visualization functionality provided in Spread gives your data a voice, for example:
- Use Cell Styles to make important data stand out on the sheet.
- Use Sparklines to provide small, focused cell-level charts.
- Use Conditional Format easily spot trends and patterns in you data using bars, colors, and icons to visually highlight important values.
Additional data visualization is provided in Spread through: Chart support, conditional formatting, filtering, and grouping.
Integrated Spreadsheet Chart Control
Create expressive 2D and 3D charts within your spreadsheets. Select from various chart types, including:
Column

Line

Pie

Bar

Area

XY

Bubble

Stock

XYZ

Doughnut

Radar

Polar
Add charts at design time using the Spread Designer and Chart Designer, or through code using the comprehensive Chart object model. Charts can be bound to external data sources, and you can allow end users to make changes to the chart formatting at run time. Spread for ASP.NET features built-in design dialogs for end-user interaction to create and modify charts (like in Microsoft Excel).
Extensive Customization Options

The Spread for ASP.NET object model allows ASP.NET developers to customize UI elements and manage the behavior of the control by extending built-in classes and assigning custom objects to Spread. Developers use the Spread for ASP.NET controls to embed advanced Microsoft Excel-compatible spreadsheet features into their ASP.NET applications - features that would otherwise be considered impossible to achieve.
Design Time Support for Code-free Development

The easy-to-use, intuitive Spread Designer makes designing detailed spreadsheets and input or datagrid display screens a snap. Without writing a single line of code, design new application forms or edit existing application forms using the Microsoft Excel-like, visual, drag-and-drop user interface. The built-in Chart Designer and UI-type editors make it easy to design stunning charts and spreadsheet dashboards.
Flexible Data Binding Support
Spread can bind to any .NET data source, and includes built-in support for displaying relational datasets. The run-time support for unbound rows and columns within bound data allows for inclusion of aggregated information or for performing what-if scenario analysis. Spread also supports binding a range of cells to a data source and providing a range of cells as a data source.
Printing/PDF Support

Select from a wide range of printing options to customize the printing of your spreadsheets. Spread also supports printing to PDF documents.
Time-tested by Developers Worldwide

As the first spreadsheet component on the market for Visual Basic, Spread has been used by tens of thousands of developers worldwide for the past 20 years. It's one of the few components to be successfully localized, sold, and supported in Japan, Europe, United States, and other parts of the world. While Spread has continued to evolve over the years, the development team has stayed true to the legacy and continues to support VB.NET for .NET products, and VB for the Spread COM product.
Strong Public Knowledge Base

When you purchase Spread, you get a market leader. This means you get thorough documentation, technical support, and expert advice. Plus, be confident knowing that for nearly 20 years, over 100,000 developers have adopted and enriched Spread with their experience and skill, and have contributed to a global online knowledge base in the form of forum discussions, articles, and blogs.

What's New in Spread for ASP.NET?

Spread for ASP.NET new enhanced data visualization and improved UI for filtering, auto increment for data fill, and keyboard input handling in Spread empower users to create spreadsheets and find data trends more easily than ever. New support for Data Bars, Color Sales, Icon Sets, along with the exceptional sparkline, charting, and calculation support of past versions, make Spread the ideal tool for data analysis applications. New support for advanced column filters for Date, Number, Text, and Color, as well as multiple-condition custom filtering like Excel, together with the advanced grouping and aggregation features of past versions, make Spread ideal for data mining and analysis.

New Features

Conditional Formatting Enhancement

Enjoy the new conditional formatting. In this version we provide complete functionality and visualization such as data bars, color scales, and icon sets. This helps you visually answer specific questions about your data, and helps to highlight interesting cells or ranges of cells, emphasize unusual values, and visualize data. A conditional format changes the appearance of a cell range based on conditions (or criteria). If the condition is true, the cell range is formatted based on that condition; if the conditional is false, the cell range is not formatted based on that condition.

Filter Enhancement

Filter function improvements provide a variety of filter conditions such as number, date, text, and color for automatic filtering. You can create three types of filters: list of values, format, or criteria. Each of these filter types is mutually exclusive for each range of cells.
Moreover A totally new filter bar is provided, it is quick and easy to input filter criteria for the end user, and apply filtering to data.

Globalization Enhancement

Chinese localization: we've added localized resources for the Chinese environment. The Spread control will display Chinese at design time in Visual Studio. Chinese message information is also displayed during run time. And new support for IME status setting for cell editing, provide ImeMode properties to change IME status with code.

Context Menu

Built-in context menu support replaces browser context menu in Spread ASP.NET, you can use the ContextMenu feature from Spread to add more data manipulation and UI interaction in your application

Column Header RowTemplate

Enhance RowTemplate with new column header template in Spread ASP.NET, so that column header cells can have a different layout than data rows. You can change the traditional layout of Spread and display one row of data in multiple rows. The layout of multiple rows is controlled by a row template, which can be customized with code or the Spread Designer.

Css for Cell Editor

Enhance editable cell types with new EditorCssClass property in Spread ASP.NET, use Css syntax to set style for cell type's editor separately from the display mode CssClass property.

Coding Enhancement

Detailed IntelliSense comments can now be declared for separate overloads of JavaScript functions by using the new element, as shown in this example. For more information, see introduction on asp.net web site Spread for ASP.NET now works with strongly typed data controls for model binding. For more information about strongly typed data controls, see introduction on asp.net web site The implemented feature can be viewed in Intellisense.

Environment Enhancement

Spread ASP.NET now supports many new environments

Support IE10/FireFox
Visual Studio 2012 integration
Support Multiple DPI (96, 125, 135, 174 dpi)

Performance Enhancement

Spread ASP.NET has improved performance in many areas

Add LoadOnDemandMode to support background loading of new rows before the user scrolls to the last row, and without locking the client script APIs. Also added a TriggerMode to support timed and offset-based loading (i.e. when the user scrolls to within a specified number of rows from the bottom).
Improved performance rendering spreadsheet, PDF, and import of some Excel files
Enhanced client side scrolling with load on demand to load rows in the background and fire new client side event
Enhanced virtual scrolling that keeps extra rows from the previous page when loading new rows
Support asynchronous rendering of charts
Optimize script loading time by merging all JS and CSS
Implement key performance improvements using the Task Parallel Library.

Other Enhancements

Enhancement to DateTime, Currency, Double, and Integer cell types for separate edit mode and non-edit mode formats
Enhancement to virtual paging to support scroll bar text tips
Row and Column page break support when printing
Support locking/unlocking cells in client script
Support Cell.EncodeValue for putting raw HTML markup in cell text (set to false to embed markup and render to cell).
Client side support for setting values in cells in hidden rows or columns.
Enhancement to support ClientIDMode

Features

Native Microsoft® Excel® Support

Spread provides the industry's best native Excel support. You can import data from and export data (and formatting) to Excel, including XLS, XLSX, CSV, and TXT files, all without needing Excel installed on the user's machine. It's royalty-free and run-time free.

Data Handling

Spread provides the familiar sheets and workbooks you know from Microsoft Excel, as well as formula support, including cross-sheet references. You or your users can search, sort, filter, and group data, and you can even provide outline grouping similar to Microsoft Excel. In addition, Spread can display data in hierarchies.

Data Acquisition

Spread works with data any way you need to provide it, for example:

Bind Spread to a data source or use unbound data
Import files in many formats
Set up the data at run time
Set up the data at design time using the convenient Quick Start wizard or the Spread Designer

Appearance

Use Spread to achieve clear, colorful table layouts, custom spreadsheets, and more. How do you want your spreadsheet to appear today? Customize it to look any way you want with:

Fonts/colors
Multiple headers
Borders
Merging
Spanning
Conditional formatting

Interaction

Your end users require different levels of interaction in their spreadsheets, and Spread can do it all. Offer users these interactions, as needed:

View multiple panes of data
Drag-and-drop data
Drag fill data in cells
Freezing rows and columns
Moving rows and columns
Operation modes (Selection options)
Auto-complete options
View Cell notes

Output

Distributing data can be just as, if not more, important than simply displaying it. You can export data to different file formats, including:

Native Excel files
Delimited files
PDF
Printed reports

Designers and Wizards

Spread makes it easy to create a prototype quickly or to customize your finished designs using the built-in Designers and Wizards.

Charting

Create impressive 2D or 3D charts using code or the Spread Designer. Also, allow the end user to resize the chart and the range of data used in the chart control. There are several visual elements to a chart such as the plot, legend, and label areas; the axis, and the series.

The plot area is the area in which data points are drawn.
The legend area can be used to help end users identify different chart elements such as the series.
The label area contains additional information about the chart.
The axis displays the scale for a single dimension of a plot area.
Each series is a collection of data points.

AJAX Support

Enable AJAX support to the FpSpread component by setting one property. This allows the component to refresh without refreshing the entire page, and affects several features including:

Expanding and collapsing child sheets in a hierarchical display
Column sorting
Inserting rows
Paging

If the ClientAutoCalculation property is true, then after a cell value is changed, an AJAX call is made to the FpSpread component. Then the component calculates the formulas and sends the values to the client side. The component then updates the values at the client side.

Cell Merging

Enable automatic cell merging between columns or between rows if cells have the same value based on the policy that you set. This results in easier data viewing, for example, when bound to a database.

AJAX Extender Cell Types

The 18 cell types included in Spread, make it easy for your user to enter the expected data. These cell types are made available by using ASP.NET AJAX and are dependent on the extenders of the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. The appearance and behavior of these cell types are controlled by the AJAX Control Toolkit. All controls in the AJAX Control Toolkit can add or attach client behaviors to a target control. In Spread, the target control is exposed as the Editor property of the extender cell type.

Conditional Formatting

Conditional formatting changes the appearance of a cell range based on conditions (or criteria). If the condition is true, the cell range is formatted based on that condition; if the condition is false, the cell range is not formatted based on that condition. It is easily add conditional formats to your cells; for example, you may want to change the background color of a cell based on the cell's value. You can use a named style to specify various formatting options such as borders and colors to apply if the condition statement is valid. Moreover, visualization such as data bars, color scales, and icon sets can be used with conditional formatting to help you visually answer specific questions about your data, highlight interesting cells or ranges of cells, emphasize unusual values, and visualize data.

Data Binding

Spread can bind to any data source that supports the IList or IListSource interface, including datasets. Once you've connected to your data, Spread automatically configures its cell types to the appropriate data type and only allows editing for that data type; i.e., displaying a check box for Boolean fields. Spread makes it easy to present, edit, and update your data, for example:

Lock cells to prevent them from being edited
Hide columns or rows
Change the assigned cell type

Excel Compatibility

Spread allows you to import data from Excel and export data and formatting to Excel in its native format. This can be achieved with individual spreadsheets and entire workbooks. Save the data to an Excel-formatted (BIFF8 format) file or stream. Good news! You don't need Excel on the server for Spread to display your Excel files. In addition, the Excel document will be cached when use Spread control to import data from Excel file, and entire data will be saved back after editing, so that the document will not lose any part which is never changed.

Filtering

You can customize the user experience for filtering data on a sheet. With row filtering, you can allow the user to filter data and display only the rows of data that meet criteria from a drop-down list or change the appearance of rows based on that filter. Filtering can be set up automatically by column. And the filter drop-down list includes a variety of filter conditions such as number, date, text, and color for automatic filtering. You can create three types of filters: a list of values, format, or criteria. Each of these filter types is mutually exclusive for each range of cells. Moreover an alternate filter bar is provided making it quick and easy to input filter criteria for the end user, and apply filtering to data.

Frozen Rows & Columns

Freeze columns and rows and keep them displayed regardless of where the user navigates in the sheet. Frozen rows and frozen columns do not scroll when the user uses the scroll bar or navigation keys in the component. This is useful if you need information in non-header rows or columns to stay visible regardless of where the user navigates.

Formulas

Spread includes a powerful calculation engine that allows you to quickly add formulas to your web applications by using any of the over 300 pre-defined functions. Optionally, you can add your own custom functions. Spread also supports cross-sheet formula referencing.

Grouping

Set up Outlook-style row grouping which is helpful for large amounts of data. To select a column at run time by which to group and display that data, either double-click on the header of that column or click and drag the column into the grouping bar at the top of the page.

Hierarchy

Easily display and edit your hierarchical data using Spread. Simply set up your dataset with relations and set the HierarchicalView property to True. That’s all it takes to display your data. You have full customization at the child level if you want to hide columns, change colors, etc. You can also choose from two hierarchy views: Hierarchical View and Parent Row View.

Import/Export Files

You can import/export Microsoft Excel 97 and higher files, text files, and Spread files. This allows you to view or load your data in your favorite desktop application or, for example, create and load company templates on the fly.

LayoutMode - Row Template

For a more compressed format of displaying information, you may want to display columns with multiple lines of information. To do this:

Create row templates, also called aggregation subtotals or multiple-line columns
Display multiple lines within a column, such as to display address information together in one column that involves multiple fields of information

Load On Demand

As the user scrolls further down the spreadsheet the Spread component on the client loads another page of rows from the server as needed. This is similar to what would was called "virtual mode" in the COM version of the product. You can specify the number of rows to load initially and how many to load in subsequent loads. You can specify those properties at the component level (for FpSpread) or at the sheet level.

Operation Modes

Customize what the end user can select by working with the operation mode of the sheet. By default, the component allows users to select a cell, a column, a row, a range of cells, or the entire sheet. The MultiRangeSelection property allows the user to select multiple discontiguous blocks with the control (Ctrl) key and the mouse.

Move Columns

Allow end users to move columns by clicking on the header of a column and dragging it to another location on the spreadsheet. Enable this with the AllowColumnMove property in the FpSpread class.

Order Entry Sample

Spread is ideal for any internal online order entry system or external shopping cart. After selecting an ID, Spread grabs the requested information and passes the data back, all without a full page refresh. You can also adjust the pricing, discounts, or quantities and Spread will make an AJAX call and update the data accordingly. See a sample in action here.

Printing & PDF Support

Print the data area of a spreadsheet, add headers and footers to the printed pages, and save the spreadsheet to a PDF file. Use the SavePdf method to save Spread to the specified PDF file, and the SavePdfToResponse method to save to the specified PDF response.

Scroll Tips

Display scroll tips when the control is scrolled at run time. The scrolling grid content can be displayed in a horizontal direction or vertical direction. By default, the scroll tip content is the row header content or column header content, but you can customize this content to display other information.

Searching

Search for data in any of the cells in the workbook by specifying the sheet and the string of data for which to search. Spread includes several searching options to choose from.

Sheets

Each control can contain multiple sheets, similar to Microsoft Excel, allowing you to organize your information on one convenient web page.
You can add and remove sheets at design time or run time and hide or show sheet tabs at run time. Customize the background color and gridline color for each sheet or apply a built-in or custom "skin".

Skins

Spread includes 13 built-in skins, allowing you to provide a common look for all your Spread controls across multiple web pages or web applications. In addition, you or your designers can easily create and save your own custom skins to reuse in other projects.

Sorting

You can sort the data displayed in the sheet by column or by row. Sort in either ascending order (A to Z, zero to 9) or descending order (Z to A, 9 to zero), and select which values to use as a key when sorting the data. At run time, you can automatically sort the data by double-clicking the column header (AllowSort property).

Summary Aggregation

You can show a column footer, a group footer, or both for the sheet and put information in the footer such as formulas or text.

The column footer is an area at the bottom of the sheet.
The group footer is an extra row of footer cells at the bottom of a sheet with grouping, if you are using the grouping feature.

In order to calculate the column footer or group footer result with a formula, set the AggregationType property of the Column object to the correct formula type for that column.

Spread Designer

Spread includes a robust Spread Designer, which allows you or your web designers to quickly configure the look and feel of the Spread control with no coding required. Using the Spread Designer’s unique WYSIWYG implementation, easily assign cell types, color, text, and more to any cell.

Unbound Mode

You can use Spread in unbound mode to add your data - no dataset needed. You can also add unbound rows and columns to a bound spreadsheet.

Worksheet

Use this page to fully interact with Spread. You can enter formulas, values, formats, or other options.

FpChart

Spread includes the stand-alone FpChart control for ASP.NET. Show your charts outside of your spreadsheets, or create charts completely independently using only the chart control assembly! Learn more about ActiveChart.

Sparklines

. Spread supports Column, Line, and Win/Loss sparklines in Excel 2010, with full XLS and XLSX import and export support. Sparklines are tiny light-weight charts that are drawn in cells to provide a visual representation of data.

More sparkline features include:

Built-in UI support for clipboard cut/copy/paste.
New easy-to-use sparkline APIs.
Built-in dialog boxes for allowing your end-users to create or change sparklines.

Other Products in the Spread Family

Spread Studio for .NET

Embed Microsoft Excel-compatible spreadsheet functionality for advanced business, engineering, and scientific applications.
Spread for WinForms

Embed Microsoft Excel-compatible spreadsheet functionality into your advanced business, engineering, and scientific Windows Forms applications.
Spread WPF-Silverlight

Embed Excel spreadsheet functionality into your WPF and Silverlight applications.
Spread WinRT

Embed Excel spreadsheet functionality into your Windows 8 applications.
Spread COM

High-performance, fully-customizable spreadsheet/grid components for powerful, extendable spreadsheet solutions.

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Spread for ASP.NET

Microsoft Excel-compatible Spreadsheet Functionality