Features and technical overview

EPPlus, the .NET engine for Excel workbooks

Create, read, modify and calculate Excel workbooks in 100% managed .NET code. Import and export data in many formats. No Microsoft Excel required.

Get started Install from NuGet Pricing

// EPPlus 8: set the license once at startup
ExcelPackage.License.SetNonCommercialPersonal("Your name");

using var package = new ExcelPackage();
var sheet = package.Workbook.Worksheets.Add("Sales");

sheet.Cells["A1"].LoadFromCollection(
    orders, true, TableStyles.Medium2);
sheet.Cells["F2"].Formula = "SUM(D2:D100)";
package.Workbook.Calculate();

package.SaveAs("sales.xlsx");

478

Excel functions in the built-in calculation engine

760,000

Cells written per second

How we measured

Countries with EPPlus customers

Years of active development, open source since 2009 and commercial since 2020

Features supported

EPPlus is a .NET Framework/.NET Core library for managing Office Open XML spreadsheets, distributed via Nuget . See our Software Bill Of Material page for supported .NET frameworks. EPPlus is entirely written in managed code and has no dependencies on any other library such as Microsoft Excel.

The library is designed with the developer in mind. Our goal has always been that a developer with knowledge of Excel or any other spreadsheet library should easily get up to speed with the API. Or - as someone said - intellisense your way to victory!

Worksheets & ranges

Rows, columns and cells, and everything you do with them.

Copy worksheets and ranges, also to other workbooks, with styles and shifted references
Insert and delete, sort and fill ranges
Freeze and split panes, grouping, autofit and merged cells
Data validation with a strongly typed interface per validation type

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Add, remove, reorder, rename and hide worksheets
Print areas, page breaks, document and printer settings
Headers and footers
Worksheet properties such as gridlines and tab colors
Sort top to bottom or left to right, with custom lists, and the sort state is updated
FillNumber, FillDateTime and FillList
Copy styles only, or exclude cell properties when copying
Row and column access via EntireRow and EntireColumn
Named ranges
Hyperlinks
Notes with rich text, and threaded comments with mentions and resolve/re-open
Query cells and ranges with LINQ
Validation types: integer, decimal, list, date, time, any and custom

Read the guide

Formula calculation

A built-in calculation engine, with no dependency on Excel or any other library.

478 Excel functions
Dynamic array formulas and LAMBDA
Calculate a workbook, a worksheet or a single range
Add your own functions at runtime

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Legacy array formulas
Precision as displayed: numeric values are rounded according to the number format
Named ranges and the R1C1 format
External links: update the cache of xlsx, xlsm and xltx workbooks, add references or break links
Calculate via the external cache, or by loading and calculating the external workbook
OLE and DDE links are retained (read only)
More about formula calculation

Read the guide

Filters & slicers

Create, read, modify, apply and delete filters on ranges and tables.

Value, date/time, custom, top 10 and dynamic filters
Table and pivot table slicers
14 built-in slicer styles
Custom slicer styles, from scratch or based on a built-in style

Read the guide

Tables & pivot tables

Formatted tables and pivot tables, including pivot table calculation.

60 table styles and 84 pivot table styles, or your own custom styles
Total rows, sorting and filters, and adding or deleting rows and columns with shifting
Pivot table calculation and GETPIVOTDATA
Export tables to DataTable, JSON, HTML/CSS or IEnumerable<T>

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Tables: sort with updated sort state, total row functions supported by the calculation engine
Table filters and slicers
Pivot tables: row, column, page and data fields
12 data field functions
Numeric and date grouping
Calculated fields
Styling with pivot areas
Pivot table filters and slicers

Read the guide

Charts & sparklines

Every Excel 2019 chart type, with modern styling.

All Excel 2019 chart types, with strongly typed classes per type
Full support for modern chart styles
Load charts from crtx files
Line, column and win/loss sparklines

Read the guide

Pictures, shapes & controls

Drawing objects on the worksheet and inside cells.

187 shape types with text, fills, gradients, effects and shadows
Pictures: jpg, gif, png, tiff, bmp, emf, wmf, svg, ico and webp
In-cell pictures with alt text, also via the IMAGE function
Nine form control types, linked to cells or VBA macros

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Add pictures from files, streams or byte arrays
In-cell pictures can be marked as decorative; formats png, jpg, gif, bmp, webp and ico
OLE objects, linked or embedded, with custom icons

Read the guide

Styling

Cell styles, conditional formatting and themes.

Number formats, fonts, fills, borders, alignment and protection
Named styles, wrap text and text rotation
Conditional formatting: 45 types, strongly typed
Themes: load thmx files or modify the current theme

Read the guide

Import, export & formats

Move data in and out of worksheets with one line of code.

Import from collections, arrays, DataSets, DataReaders and text files into formatted tables
Export to CSV, JSON, HTML/CSS, DataTable, IEnumerable<T> or streams
Load and save files, streams and byte arrays, with async/await
External connections and query tables

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Write to a web response stream without file access
Templates
Reads and writes xlsx and xlsm. The xlsx Strict format is not supported.
Reads xltx, crtx and thmx
Reads and writes txt and csv via LoadFromText and SaveToText
Power Query, database, OLAP, web and text connections, and pivot tables with an external connection as source

Read the guide

Security & VBA

Protection, encryption, signatures and macros.

Protect workbooks, worksheets and ranges, or set a workbook to read-only with a password
Standard and Agile encryption
Digital signatures, signature lines and stamps
VBA: create, modify, sign and password protect VBA projects

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Open password protected workbooks
Standard encryption for older Office versions, Agile for Office 2010 and later
VBA signatures: Legacy, Agile and V3, with five hash algorithms

Read the guide

Performance with large workbooks

A 63 MB workbook with 200 columns and 100,000 rows, where half of the cells contain integers and half contain strings of 36 characters.

EPPlus 8.7.2, Intel Core i9-12900HK (14 cores, 2.5 GHz), 64 GB RAM, NVMe SSD, Windows 11, .NET 10

View the source code for the test

26.2 s

Create the workbook and save it to disk

15.7 s

Load the workbook from disk

Ready to start?

A battle-hardened codebase after many years as the world's most downloaded .NET library for spreadsheets, with quality ensured by thousands of unit tests.

The source code for EPPlus is openly available on GitHub , distributed under the Polyform Noncommercial license.

See this page for features added to the library from version 5 and up.

Read the guides API reference Change log

using OfficeOpenXml;
using System.Diagnostics;

ExcelPackage.License.SetNonCommercialPersonal("Your name");

var fileInfo = new FileInfo("c:\\Temp\\EPPlus_PerfTest.xlsx");
if (File.Exists(fileInfo.FullName)) File.Delete(fileInfo.FullName);

Console.WriteLine("Creating package");
var sw = Stopwatch.StartNew();
await WriteToDisk(sw, fileInfo);
sw.Stop();
Console.WriteLine(" Total seconds writing data: " + sw.Elapsed.TotalSeconds);

Console.WriteLine("Loading package...");
sw.Restart();
await LoadFromDisk(fileInfo);
sw.Stop();
Console.WriteLine(" Total seconds loading data: " + sw.Elapsed.TotalSeconds);

static async Task LoadFromDisk(FileInfo fileInfo)
{
    using var package = new ExcelPackage();
    await package.LoadAsync(fileInfo);
    Console.WriteLine("Cell GR100000: " + package.Workbook.Worksheets[0].Cells["GR100000"].Value);
}

static async Task WriteToDisk(Stopwatch sw, FileInfo fileInfo)
{
    using var package = new ExcelPackage(fileInfo);
    var sheet = package.Workbook.Worksheets.Add("Test");
    var toCol = 200;
    var toRow = 100000;
    for (var row = 1; row <= toRow; row++)
    {
        for (var col = 1; col <= toCol; col++)
        {
            if (col % 2 == 0)
            {
                sheet.SetValue(row, col, row + col);
            }
            else
            {
                sheet.SetValue(row, col, "abc123abc123abc123abc123abc123abc123");
            }
        }
    }
    Console.WriteLine(" Data written to cell store: " + sw.Elapsed.TotalSeconds);
    await package.SaveAsync();
}

EPPlus, the .NET engine for Excel workbooks

Features supported

Worksheets & ranges

Formula calculation

Filters & slicers

Tables & pivot tables

Charts & sparklines

Pictures, shapes & controls

Styling

Import, export & formats

Security & VBA

Performance with large workbooks

Ready to start?

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