Hello,

I have a need to display several excel 2003 spreadsheets on web site in order to make them available to several users from anywhere. I know you can do a save as to an xml file and post the file on a web server. The problems is only one person can access it at a time. Plus you can't save changes.

My thoughts are you would do something such as open the excel xml into a dataset or xmlDoc or such which I can do. However I can't figure out or find any documentation on how to make the info in the dataset display in a spreadsheet format.

I have found the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas but I can't find any documentation to do specifcally what I'm trying to do. I though it would be something like this.

DataSet xlsDataSet = new DataSet();
xlsDataSet.ReadXmlSchema(Server.MapPath("excel2003 xml.xsd"));
xlsDataGrid.DataSource = xlsDataSet;
xlsDataGrid.DataBind();

However I get all kinds of errors trying to build this. Complaining about child elements in the xsd file.

What's puzzling, is if I take the XML document and open it in IE via virtual directory, it comes up exactly like I want. I need to figure out how to display it like that when using a dataset, table or whatever to display it.

Then how to allow edited cell info to be passed to the dataset and then flushed back into the file.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

You would have to provide public update access to your server in order to do this. This would require some kind of Sever Side Scripting (ASP, PHP, PERL etc.) to control user access and file read write Plus you would need the knowledge and time to configure it.

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Thank you Bill,

Not sure what you are talking about. Doing some reading, wouldn't it be a simple as using an XmlDoc object to read the contents into. Then what you would need is an Xml Styesheet as provided in SpreadML and then an excel Stylesheet to control the display. Then you have a event update type to detect whenever a user modified data and send that cell info back to the original xml file?


I was just hoping there was an Excel stylesheet out there and an example. Actually I think there will be in the XML Content Development Kit if it ever releases.

Thanks

I know you can do some cool things with XML. My knowledge of XML is limited. The strength of XML is separating the data and the formatting. "Write once display everywhere" You still have to use some server side processing to write the data and handle multi-user access.

If you come accross any good info post back to let us know.

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Thanks Bill,

If I figure it out I think I'm going to write a book and sell it. Very painful trying to find documentation. Called MS support Office integration and .Net Dev support and they are about as clueless as me.

Actually, I think there is documentation on the way if they ever get the XML content Development Kit released. If you check out this article it contains most of what I'm talking about. Just can't get to the example used until the CDK releases which looks like it got delayed again.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...odc_unlock.asp