IronXL (also known as IronExcel) provides a high‑level C# Excel library for creating, reading and editing spreadsheets without needing Microsoft Office. Unlike Interop, IronXL works cross‑platform and doesn’t require Excel to be installed. It supports XLSX, XLS, CSV, TSV, JSON and XML formats and can import/export DataTables and DataSets.

Key Features

• Create and design spreadsheets: Build new workbooks, duplicate worksheets, set the active sheet and define workbook properties like title and author.
• Working with data: Insert formulas (SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX), evaluate them, and retrieve calculated values. Group or ungroup rows and columns, add hyperlinks and sort or filter ranges. You can import DataTables or DataSets and export to CSV or JSON.
• Layout and formatting: Freeze panes, auto‑size columns, merge/unmerge cells, apply number/date formats, set fonts, colors, borders and conditional formatting. The API also supports inserting and extracting images and creating charts.
• Security: Protect worksheets and workbooks with passwords and encryption. You can also track changes and set worksheet permissions.
• Cross‑platform & performance: IronXL runs on .NET 10–3.1 and .NET Framework 4.6.2+, on Windows, Linux and macOS. It reads large spreadsheets quickly, making it suitable for data‑heavy applications.
• NuGet & documentation: Install with Install‑Package IronXL or visit the NuGet package. Full documentation and samples are available at IronXL Docs and examples.

2025 Change‑Log Highlights

The October 2025 release fixed issues where numeric cells were incorrectly detected as DateTime values, corrected data type corruption when converting XLSX to XLS, and improved AutoSizeColumn overestimation. Earlier updates provided bug fixes for table creation, row counting and improved System.Drawing dependencies. These improvements enhance reliability for large spreadsheets and legacy formats.

Tutorials and Resources

The IronXL getting‑started guide explains how to load workbooks and read cell values. The examples page offers sample code for generating charts, importing CSV files and applying conditional formatting. Many developers pair IronXL with IronPDF to convert spreadsheets into PDFs for reporting. We provide a 30-day trial with technical support at no obligation.