Create an Excel file

While you can use specialized packages to create native Excel file, an easy way to import data into Excel is to create an HTML file and embed the date into a TABLE tag. You give to the file the XLS extension and Excel will do the translation for you!

With a text editor or from a program, create a file named test.xls with this content

<TABLE> 
<th><h4>Just testing</h4>
<TR><TD width="20">1</TD><TD width="30">2</TD><TD width="40">3</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>4</TD><TD>4</TD><TD>6</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>7</TD><TD>8</TD><TD>9</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>=SUM(A3:A5)</TD><TD>=SUM(B3:B5)</TD><TD>=SUM(C3:C5)</TD></TR>
</TABLE>

Now you can double click on the saved file to load it into Excel and the translation will be done.

This trick works with OpenOffice too.

From a server, remember to send the appropriate MIME TYPE : application/excel to the client.