Live Excel Spread Sheet on web page

[Doc666]

I am looking to embed a live Excel spread sheet in one of my Web pages. This sheet when opened in Excel displays live count data from my equipment. I am looking for a means to display this same live data on a Web Page so it can be viewed with a standard browser app from remote PC's
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated

[Paul T]

You need to write a web page that presents the data in the form you want.
Then you need to set the page to refresh every X seconds.
The local browser will now re-run the page and collect the latest data.

cheers, Paul

[jscher2000]

If you only want to target Internet Explorer users, there might be an embeddable ActiveX control that can actually run your XLS "as is" (well, assuming users have permission to access everything the Excel file accesses).

There probably are some cross-browser, no-plugin solutions that don't require refreshing the full web page. (I wonder whether this live count of Firefox downloads requires HTML5 or could be used in non-HTML5 browsers? http://glow.mozilla.org/ Edit: More info on how that data feed works: http://www.sqlstream.com/blog/2011/0...ind-the-scene/)

[Doc666]

As I am new to this web page building task, where might I find tips & or instructions on how to do this. Internet Explorer users are the main target as this is an internal site and IE is the only app they have

[jscher2000]

For information on the spreadsheet control: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Web_Components

For building a web application, I'm afraid there is a ton of information and one would want to focus on the specific details of your project. You may need hands-on assistance.

[Doc666]

I am still not having any luck updating the the web from the live data displayed on the Excel sheet

[ruirib]

This is not a simple task. Have you tried searching for code to do this?

There are many variables that need to be considered. What technology does your website use? What type of web development platforms are you experienced with?

If I had to do this, I would do it using COM Interop, from a .net web page, using Excel VBA to access the desired data. So this needs you to know how to programatically access a given cell or cell range, in Excel and do it from a .net web page.

The technical details do not stop there, then. Usually web servers are not configured to allow COM Interop to run, so you will need to get your webmaster to configure IIS to allow this. You most likely will need to have the Office version you need installed in the web server. Also, this type of interaction is achieved in an easier way using .net 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010.

There may be other solutions, I really don't know. If you are interested in pursuing this avenue, I can recommend a book that goes a long way towards helping you do it - Programming Excel with VBA & Net, by Jeff Webb and Steve Saunders, O'Reilly. It won't teach you how to write .net websites though, but it is a great book on how to access Excel from .net apps.

I would probably deal with this in another way. If you can get the live data to an Excel sheet, you could probably get it into a database, as well. It is far easier to obtain data and display data from a database than doing it from an Excel sheet.

[Doc666]

As you may have guessed from the historical dates on this post I have been searching off and on for months. I can built basic web pages in HTML format but never played with anything more enhanced. My expertice is more in the PLC logic end of the systems.

[ruirib]

You can't do this from HTML. You will need some dynamic web page generation technology and the easiest bet would be .net. Even if you went as far as storing the data in an easier to access format, such as comma separated values, which would spare you the need to interact with Excel, you would need to access the file system and read from a file. ASP or ASP.NET, again, would allow you to do this, but it cannot be done from a simple HTML page.

Just thinking out aloud and I apologize if it sounds dumb - you are using Excel because it is an output format from your PLC (guessing that you are using one)?

[Doc666]

Sounds like I need to expand my programming learing skills into the .NET world

[ruirib]

As I said, this is not a simple solution, not only because of the specific programming details, but also because of the tools and server requirements to implement a solution. I think that if the possibility of using another data output format or inserting the data into a database, automatically, exists, it probably should be explored.

[jscher2000]

Microsoft's "classic" ASP from before the birth of .Net also contained technologies that could read an XLS as though it were a database table. Your best choice probably depends on the server (e.g., if you have Microsoft+IIS vs. Linux+Apache), patience for learning new technologies, and ease of access to tools and code samples.

Similar thread: Exporting Excel spreadsheet into .asp website | Windows Secrets Lounge

[ruirib]

Microsoft's "classic" ASP from before the birth of .Net also contained technologies that could read an XLS as though it were a database table. Your best choice probably depends on the server (e.g., if you have Microsoft+IIS vs. Linux+Apache), patience for learning new technologies, and ease of access to tools and code samples.

Similar thread: Exporting Excel spreadsheet into .asp website | Windows Secrets Lounge

That's quite interesting. Surely simpler in terms of requirements, because all you need is a Jet driver and that is readlity available.

[JoeP517]

If you have other Microsoft based web technologies such as SharePoint this can be easy to do.

Joe

[ruirib]

If you have other Microsoft based web technologies such as SharePoint this can be easy to do.

Joe

Somehow I thought Sharepoint server wasn't really available here, but it would definitely be an option.

If it is not, the ASP option pointed out by jscher2000 would be a good option. Layout wise, Doc666 could just use his HTML knowledged and I am sure that with some help here, it wouldn't be too hard to read the file using ADO.