Create an Excel File from Visual Basic

April 25th, 2007

Creating and working with Excel files from Visual Basic is very easy. To demonstrate, let's create a very simple console application that will create an excel workbook, "HelloWorld.xls". In Sheet1!A1 of the workbook, we'll put the words "Hello, World".

Here's how.

1. In Visual Basic 2005 Express, create a new console application.

2. Add a reference to the Microsoft Excel Object Library.

3. Put the code.

Imports Microsoft.Office.Interop
Imports System.IO
Module Module1

Sub Main()
Dim xlApp As New Excel.Application
Dim xlWb As Excel.Workbook
Dim strFileName As String
xlWb = xlApp.Workbooks.Add
xlWb.Worksheets(1).Range("A1").Value = "Hello, World"
strFileName = My.Application.Info.DirectoryPath & "\HelloWorld.xls"
If File.Exists(strFileName) Then
If vbNo = MsgBox(strFileName & " already exists. Overwrite?", MsgBoxStyle.Question & MsgBoxStyle.YesNo) Then
xlWb.Close(False)
xlApp.Quit()
Exit Sub
End If
End If
xlApp.DisplayAlerts = False
xlWb.SaveAs(My.Application.Info.DirectoryPath & "\HelloWorld.xls")
xlApp.DisplayAlerts = True

xlWb.Close(False)
xlApp.Quit()
End Sub

End Module

You can download the sample project here .

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