Introduction
ExcelDna is an open-source project to integrate .Net into Excel. The primary target is the Excel user who currently writes VBA code for functions and macros, and would like to start using .NET. Also interested would be C/C++ based .xll add-in developers who want to use the .NET framework to develop their add-ins.
ExcelDna is free for all use, and distributed under a permissive open-source license that also allows commercial use.
ExcelDna is developed using .NET 2.0, and users have to install the freely available .NET Framework 2.0 runtime. The integration is by an Excel Add-In (.xll) that exposes .NET code to Excel. The user code can be in text-based (.dna) script files (C#, Visual Basic or F#), or compiled .NET libraries (.dll).
Getting Started
Download the latest release, and have a look at the
Getting Started page.
Support
The primary home for ExcelDna thus far has been the Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/exceldna, where an extensive history of discussions can be found.
You are also welcome to contact me directly at
govert@icon.co.za with questions, comments or suggestions.
Related Projects
- Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) is Microsoft's preferred plan for integrating .NET with Office. It is mainly aimed at making it easy for Visual Studio developers to create solutions integrated with the Office applications. In constrast, ExcelDna is (eventually) aimed at Excel end-users, as a compelling replacement for VBA, completely independent of Visual Studio.
- Jens Thiel's ManagedXll is an established, commercial product to easily create .xll libraries in .NET. If ManagedXll were free, ExcelDna would not exist. Currently ExcelDna has the functionality of a basic version of ManagedXll.
- There are a number of C/C++ libraries and tools for creating .xlls, apart from the Excel SDK and related examples. In particular I initially used the xlw library, there is also the C++ style xll, and the commercial Xll+ toolkit.
Performance
Information about the performance of ExcelDna user-defined functions can be found on the
ExcelDna Performance page.