Note: this method is deprecated in favour of using VCPKG. See the libxlswriter docs: https://libxlsxwriter.github.io/getting_started.html#gsg_vcpkg

MSVCLibXlsxWriter

MSVCLibXlsxWriter is a MSVC project to build a Windows DLL for libxlsxwriter a C library for creating Excel XLSX files.

Libxlsxwriter is a C library that can be used to write text, numbers, formulas and hyperlinks to multiple worksheets in an Excel 2007+ XLSX file.

It supports features such as:

• 100% compatible Excel XLSX files.
• Full Excel formatting.
• Merged cells.
• Defined names.
• Autofilters.
• Charts.
• Worksheet PNG/JPEG images.
• Memory optimization mode for writing large files.
• Source code available on GitHub.
• FreeBSD ref license.
• ANSI C.
• Works with GCC 4.x, GCC 5.x, Clang, Xcode, MSVC 2015, ICC and TCC.
• Works on Linux, FreeBSD, OS X, iOS and Windows.
• The only dependency is on zlib.

See the full libxlsxwriter documentation for a getting started guide, a tutorial, the main API documentation and examples. Or browse the source code on GitHub.

Building a Windows DLL of libxlsxwriter

The MSVCLibXlsxWriter repository contains 3 directories:

• LibXlsxWriterProj: A MSVC project to build a LibXlsxWriter.dll from the libxlsxwriter source code. The directory also contains a pre-built Zlib.dll file.

• ExampleExe: A libxlsxwriter sample application built as a console application that requires the LibXlsxWriter.dll and Zlib.dll files.

• libxlsxwriter: The libxlsxwriter source code in a git submodule, see below.

The libxlsxwriter directory is a Git submodule. This means that it isn't included when you do a standard Git clone of MSVCLibXlsxWriter. In order to get the submodule as well as the project code you must clone the project recursively as follows:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/jmcnamara/MSVCLibXlsxWriter.git

Or update it explicitly as follows:

git clone https://github.com/jmcnamara/MSVCLibXlsxWriter.git
cd MSVCLibXlsxWriter/
git submodule init
git submodule update

This version of MSVCLibXlsxWriter contains libxlsxwriter version 0.3.8.

To build the DLL of the library open the LibXlsxWriterProj/LibXlsxWriter.sln project in MS Visual Studio and build the solution using the "Build -> Build Solution" menu item.

In the default configuration this will build an x64 debug LibXlsxWriter .lib and .dll in:

MSVCLibXlsxWriter\LibXlsxWriterProj\x64\Debug

Building a console application using the LibXlsxWriter.lib

Ensure that LibXlsxWriter.lib was built correctly in the previous steps.

To build the example executable open the ExampleExe/ExampleExe.sln project in MS Visual Studio and build the solution using the "Build -> Build Solution" menu item.

In the default configuration this will build the following x64 exe file:

MSVCLibXlsxWriter\ExampleExe\x64\Debug\ExampleExe.exe

To run the application copy the LibXlsxWriter.dll and Zlib.dll files from the MSVCLibXlsxWriter\LibXlsxWriterProj sub-directories to the same directory as the executable. You can then run the application by double clicking on it in File Explorer or by opening a CMD console and running it from the directory.

Once the program has run it will create a chart_column.xlsx file based on the default sample application in ExampleExe.cpp. You can run other libxlsxwriter example programs by copying the code from one of the libxlsxwriter\example\*.c programs.