NPOI is the .NET version of POI Java project. POI is an open source project which can help you read/write Office 2003/2007 files.
NPOI advantages
a. It's totally free to use
b. Cover most Excel features (cell styles, data formats, formulas and so on)
c. Supports .xls, .xlsx, .docx
d. Designed to be interface-oriented (in NPOI.SS namespace)
e. Supports not only export but also import
f. .NET 2.0 based even for xlsx and docx (but it also supports .NET 4.0)
g. Successful use cases all over the world
h. Great amount of basic and to the point samples
i. Professional service support (even 24*7) directly from NPOI team (not free)
My dear friend Tony Qu from China (the guy behind NPOI development) approached me and asked me to help him share NPOI 2.0 news with the English speakers. I’m always glad to help spread the word about this amazing open source project that has served me in many situations.
The most seen and shared post of this humble blog as of now has almost 9000 shares and was published on 7/02/2009 – oh God that’s exactly 4.5 years ago… its title is Creating Excel spreadsheets .XLS and .XLSX in C#. This huge amount of shares shows that a tool that does what NPOI does is highly demanded in the market. No doubt!
You know: when I wrote that post I had no idea it would be so useful to so many people. My intention with this blog is really to share useful things with the world giving back a bit of what I find/learn/improve from the great minds spread throughout this big planet earth. This is a continuous\infinite process for sure.
OK dude: that’s enough of food for thought. Let me show you what’s going on with NPOI. Here you go…
NPOI 2.0 release
The release is planned for this January. We agreed to publish posts discussing major features/enhancements that’s arriving.
Here they are:
1 - WorkbookFactory can help make HSSF and XSSF transparent for users
2 - Excel 2007 and Word 2007 support
3 - Cell, Row, Sheet copying and Workbook merging
4 - Converting Excel XLS documents to HTML format
5 - isRightToLeft and setRightToLeft in XSSF and HSSF
6 - Diagonal line in cells for both Excel 2003 and Excel 2007
7 - Excel 2007 chart support
8 - New excel functions added in formula calculation
9 - NPOI tag added to files generated with NPOI
10 - XSSFWorkbook implements IEnumerator
Keep an eye on this blog for the next posts.
NPOI source code
https://github.com/tonyqus/npoi
NPOI NuGet package
https://www.nuget.org/packages/NPOI/2.0.6
