I need to develop a website that will allow the users to upload Excel 2003
files that need to be read and the information stored in a database. The
site will also produce reports in Excel format. This is no problem to do
with a desktop app as long as the user has Office installed.

My question is what is the bare minimum that I need to install in order to
get the capability to read/write Excel 2003 documents? I don't want to put a
full installation of Excel on the server if it can be avoided. Is there
another way? Will it be any different with Excel 2007?

Hi Bagger,

My question is what is the bare minimum that I need to install in order to
get the capability to read/write Excel 2003 documents? I don't want to put a
full installation of Excel on the server if it can be avoided. Is there
another way? Will it be any different with Excel 2007?

There is a Java tool that allows you to read and write Excel binary files.
Google for J-excel api.
I've also read about a .NET tool that is capable of the same, but I lost the
reference to it.

Alternatively, if you have VBScript capabilities on your site you could use
VBScript and ADO to extract data from Excel files. IIRC it can even write data
back into Excel, as long as it is in table format.

Regards,

Jan Karel Pieterse
Excel MVP
http://www.jkp-ads.com
Member of:
Professional Office Developer Association
www.proofficedev.com