Excel export from .NET reports

When people ask for “Export to Excel”, they want numbers they can add up, sort and filter, not a picture of the page. Tagua’s Tagua.Excel package makes a workbook from the same template and data as the PDF, built from the report’s data rather than its pages:

Real numbers and dates. A text that is one expression, such as {Amount:C} or {Issued:d}, becomes a number or a date with the matching Excel format, so SUM and sorting work, and it still reads like the PDF. A format taken from the data, {Format(Amount, AmountFormat)}, works the same way.
Rows from bands. Each detail row, group header and footer becomes a row; values fall into columns that follow the report’s layout, and a value that spans several columns in the report spans them in the sheet.
Collapsible groups. Groups get Excel’s outline levels, so each folds into its total.
A frozen header. The page header’s column titles sit at the top and stay in view.

An example

The grouped list as a workbook: the column titles frozen, each letter’s countries a level below its header and total, and the populations stored as numbers with a #,##0 format. Download the workbook.

		A	B	C
1		Country List
2		Name	Population	Continent
3		Countries starting with letter: A
4	│	Albania	2,750,000	Europe
5	│	Algeria	45,600,000	Africa
6	│	Argentina	46,000,000	South America
7	│	Australia	26,600,000	Oceania
8	│	Austria	9,100,000	Europe
9		5 countries, 130,050,000 people
10		Countries starting with letter: B
11	│	Bangladesh	171,500,000	Asia
12	│	Belgium	11,800,000	Europe
13	│	Bolivia	12,400,000	South America
14	│	Brazil	203,000,000	South America
15	│	Bulgaria	6,450,000	Europe
16		5 countries, 405,150,000 people
17		Countries starting with letter: C
18	│	Canada	40,100,000	North America
19	│	Chile	19,600,000	South America
20	│	China	1,410,000,000	Asia
21	│	Colombia	52,200,000	South America
22	│	Croatia	3,850,000	Europe
23		5 countries, 1,525,750,000 people
24		Countries starting with letter: D

Countries of the World · the first 24 of 75 rows · rows 1–2 frozen · groups collapse (│ = outline level)

And the invoice: prices and amounts stored as numbers with a euro format, VAT as a percentage, and the totals under the Amount column, with their labels spanning the columns before it as in the PDF. Download the workbook.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G
1			Invoice
2			No. INV-0042
3			Issued 01/09/2026 · Due 01/10/2026
4	Bill to
5	Contoso Ltd 1 Main Street Dublin D02
6	Description			Qty	Unit price	VAT	Amount
7	Consulting (hourly, remote)			3	€0.10	23%	€0.30
8	Support contract — September			2	€100.00	23%	€200.00
9	Net						€200.30
10	VAT						€46.07
11	Total due						€246.37
12		How to pay
13		Transfer €246.37 to IBAN IE29AIBK93115212345678 by Thursday 1 October 2026, quoting INV-0042, or scan the code with your banking app.

Invoice INV-0042

Hover over a number to see its Excel format.

From C#

Add the package:
Terminal window
```
dotnet add package Tagua.Excel
```

Render the report as a workbook:

using Tagua;
using Tagua.Excel;

TaguaSettings.License = LicenseType.Community;

var report = CompiledReport.Compile(TemplateLoader.LoadFile("sales.report.yaml"));
await using var xlsx = File.Create("sales.xlsx");
var result = await ExcelReports.RenderExcelAsync(report, inputs, xlsx);
foreach (var diagnostic in result.Diagnostics) Console.WriteLine(diagnostic);

To make the PDF and the workbook from one read of the data, fill the report once and give the result to both: new ExcelRenderer().Render(filled, xlsx) takes the FilledReport that ReportFiller.FillAsync returns.

From the command line, the output’s extension picks the format:

tagua render sales.report.yaml --out sales.xlsx

Formats

The template’s .NET formats become Excel number formats, in the report’s culture:

In the template	Excel format	Shows
`{Amount:C}` (en-US)	`"$"#,##0.00`	$1,234.50
`{Amount:C}` (de-DE)	`#,##0.00\ "€"`	1.234,50 €
`{Amount:N0}`	`#,##0`	1,235
`{Rate:P1}`	`#,##0.0%`	25.6%
`{Number:D5}`	`00000`	00042
`{Weight:0.0 'kg'}`	`0.0\ "kg"`	3.5 kg
`{Issued:yyyy-MM-dd}`	`yyyy"-"mm"-"dd`	2026-09-24
`{Issued:d}` (en-US)	`m"/"d"/"yyyy`	9/24/2026

A value keeps its full precision: a VAT of 46.069 is stored as 46.069 and shown as €46.07, as Excel users expect. What has no faithful Excel equivalent stays text, exactly as the PDF shows it: hexadecimal (X), dates before March 1900 (where Excel’s calendar is off by a day), and text that mixes words and values.

What else carries over

Styles: fonts, bold, italic, colours, fills, borders and alignment.
Tables keep their columns, header row and footer rows, and their own border and background: the edge cells carry the border and every cell the background (a sheet has no room for the padding). Subreports are laid out in place.
Right-to-left rows and tables start at the right, as in the report.
Printing fits the columns to the page’s width, in the report’s orientation.
Page footers are left out: a sheet has no pages.

Images, barcodes and charts

Images become pictures in their cells, sized as in the PDF: the element’s width, its height or the image’s proportions, and its fit. What cover and none clip is cropped. The row grows to the picture’s height.
Barcodes become pictures of their symbols, the same size as in the PDF, with every module a whole number of pixels, so they stay sharp and scanners read them from the sheet. CI decodes every sample barcode from its workbook.
Charts become native Excel charts of the same kind, with their title, legend, labels, colours and number format. An Excel chart reads its values from cells, so each chart’s categories and values go on a second sheet, Chart data. Edit a value there and the chart follows.
Sparklines (charts under 60pt tall) become Excel’s own sparklines, drawn in their cell, where those draw the same thing: one series, as a line or as columns. They read their values from the Chart data sheet, one row each, and span the same range as in the PDF. Other sparklines (several series, bars, areas, pies, negative columns) become small charts without axes, legend or title.

Images need the same resource resolver as the PDF; RenderExcelAsync takes it from the inputs, and ExcelRenderer from ExcelOptions.Resources.

The workbook is written without any other library, runs under native AOT, and gives the same bytes for the same input.