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The following sample script creates an Excel spreadsheet with three columns.

The first two contain numeric data in the cells and the third sends a function which will calculate a sum of the numbers in the first two columns.

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Buffer = True
Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel"
%>
<table border="1">
<tr>
    <th>Column A</th>
    <th>Column B</th>
    <th>Totals Column</th>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>4</td>
    <td>3</td>
    <td><font color="red">=sum(a2:b2)</font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>2</td>
    <td>1</td>
    <td><font color="red">=sum(a3:b3)</font></td>
</tr>
</table>

The above code will work in IE 4 and above. The client also needs to have Microsoft Excel installed. The magic is the Response.ContentType command. It tells the browser what type of content to expect... in this case an Excel Spreadsheet. The rest of what happens is all dependent on how Excel handles the HTML and luckily it does a pretty darn good job.

While this won't let you do everything Excel is capable of, it can be quite handy if, for example, you're developing an Intranet and just want to send a user some data that they then need to perform some calculations with. Just return your data as standard HTML and let Excel handle it.

And don't hesitate to try things like borders or even complex formatting... you'd be amazed at how much Excel knows about HTML.

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