As bad an idea as this can be, I'm still getting a lot of requests for the ability to use Excel as a data source. Well here you go! Please be aware that while ASP is meant to handle multiple users, Excel is not. That means that you should expect problems if you put this on a server that handles multiple users.

Because of this limitation, I've departed from my standard "all our samples are running on the site" philosophy and while you can download the code, and what you see above was actually produced from a real run of it, it was not produced on the fly.

Like any other data source, you can also change values in the underlying file. These changes will be reflected in the Excel file next time you open it.

For more information see Microsoft's Knowledge Base Article: HOWTO: Query and Update Excel Data Using ADO From ASP. If you're doing this as a method to get data to the users in Excel file format, please consider using this method instead: HOWTO: Use ASP to Query and Display Database Data in Excel. It's much easier on the server as it avoids using Excel altogether.

Oh and I almost forgot... the sample Excel file (13.8 kb) and a zipped version (1.7 kb).