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!

Formulas & filters

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

478 Excel functions
Dynamic array formulas with spill ranges, and legacy array formulas
LAMBDA and LET, including recursion and LAMBDAs as defined names
Filters and slicers on ranges, tables and pivot tables

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Add your own functions at runtime
Cancel a running calculation, and log the calculation to troubleshoot formulas
Precision as displayed: numeric values are rounded according to the number format
Table references, named ranges and the R1C1 format
Trim reference operators
Regression analysis functions
Circular references
External workbooks: update the cache, add references or break links, or calculate the external workbook
Security controls for calculating workbooks from external sources
Value, date/time, custom, top 10 and dynamic filters
14 built-in slicer styles, and custom slicer styles

Read the guide

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
Named ranges
Used range and taking and skipping rows and columns
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
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

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
Create pivot tables with row, column, page and data fields, grouping and calculated fields
Pivot table calculation and GETPIVOTDATA

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Table filters and slicers
Work with table data rows
12 data field functions, and Show Values As
Export tables to DataTable, JSON, HTML/CSS or IEnumerable<T>
Expand and collapse pivot table items
Pivot table sorting
Styling with pivot areas, and custom pivot table styles
Pivot table filters and slicers

Read the guide

Charts & drawing objects

Charts, shapes, pictures, form controls and other drawing objects.

All Excel 2019 chart types, with strongly typed classes per type
Modern chart styles and chart templates (crtx)
187 shape types with text, fills, gradients, effects and shadows
Pictures and in-cell pictures, also via the IMAGE function

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Line, column and win/loss sparklines
Nine form control types, linked to cells or VBA macros
OLE objects, linked or embedded, with custom icons
Copy drawings within and between worksheets
Picture formats: jpg, gif, png, tiff, bmp, emf, wmf, svg, ico and webp, from files, streams or byte arrays
In-cell pictures with alt text, or marked as decorative
Chart samples

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

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Custom named table and slicer styles
Formatted cell text via the ExcelRange.Text property
Color scales, icon sets, custom icon sets and data bars

Read the guide

Import & export data

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

Import from collections, arrays, DataTables, DataReaders and dictionaries
Export to CSV, JSON, DataTable or IEnumerable<T>
Load and save files, streams and byte arrays, with async/await
Read and write CSV and other text files via LoadFromText and SaveToText, also fixed-width

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Attributes on your classes control styling, number formats and formulas when loading collections
Fixed-width text files, via LoadFromText and ToText
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
External connections and query tables: Power Query, database, OLAP, web and text connections, and pivot tables with an external connection as source

Read the guide

Output formats

Render worksheet content as HTML for web pages, with PDF on the way.

Export ranges and tables to HTML and CSS, with conditional formatting, icon sets and data bars
Settings for styling, pictures and hyperlinks, and data attributes for use in web apps
Accessible HTML output
Save workbooks as PDF Preview in EPPlus 9

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Fonts: configure fonts and font fallbacks
PDF page setup Preview in EPPlus 9

Read the guide

VBA & protection

Protection, encryption, signatures, sensitivity labels 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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Sensitivity labels via Microsoft Information Protection
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

Formulas & filters

Worksheets & ranges

Tables & pivot tables

Charts & drawing objects

Styling

Import & export data

Output formats

VBA & protection

Performance with large workbooks

Ready to start?

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