Panoramica

HotXLS Excel Read/Write Library is a high-performance Excel read-write component for Delphi & C++Builder It can create new Excel spreadsheets e read o modify existing XLS e XLSX workbooks without requiring Microsoft Excel o Office to be installed on the machine HotXLS is written entirely in Object Pascal. It reads e writes Excel files directly at the binary e OOXML level, so there is no COM/OLE automation overhead e no dependency on Office being licensed o present. HotXLS supports Delphi e C++Builder XE5 through 13 Florence Classic XLS color formatting intentionally remains palette-based. Vedere Classic XLS color model for the ThemeColor / TintAndShade decision

lxHandle	Primary facade for the Excel 97–2003 BIFF8 format (.xls), plus HTML, RTF, CSV, e TSV export. All existing user code continues to use this unit unchanged. Entry points: TXLSWorkbook, TXLSWorksheet, IXLSWorkbook, IXLSRange
lxHandleX	Primary facade for the Excel 2007+ OOXML format (.xlsx) e OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods) read/write. Provides its own workbook e worksheet types so XLSX-specific behavior is not retrofitted onto the BIFF code path. Entry points: TXLSXWorkbook, TXLSXWorksheet, TXLSXCell

Classic XLS (lxHandle)

uses lxHandle;

var
  Book: IXLSWorkbook;
  ws:   TXLSWorksheet;
begin
  Book := TXLSWorkbook.Create;
  // Add a worksheet and give it a name
  ws := Book.Sheets.Add;
  ws.Name := 'Sheet1';

  // Write values to cells using A1 notation
  ws.Range['A1'].Value := 'Hello';
  ws.Range['B1'].Value := 42;
  ws.Range['C1'].Formula := '=B1*2';

  // Apply basic formatting
  ws.Range['A1'].Font.Bold := True;
  ws.Range['A1'].Interior.Color := clYellow;

  Book.SaveAs('output.xls');
end;

XLSX (lxHandleX)

uses lxHandleX;

var
  Book: TXLSXWorkbook;
  ws:   TXLSXWorksheet;
  cell: TXLSXCell;
begin
  Book := TXLSXWorkbook.Create;
  try
    ws := Book.Sheets.Add('Sheet1');

    // Write a string and a numeric value
    ws.Cells[1, 1].Value := 'Product';
    ws.Cells[1, 2].Value := 'Price';
    ws.Cells[2, 1].Value := 'Widget';
    ws.Cells[2, 2].Value := 9.99;

    // Apply a currency number format
    cell := ws.Cells[2, 2];
    cell.NumberFormat := '$#,##0.00';

    Book.SaveAs('output.xlsx');
  finally
    Book.Free;
  end;
end;

File I/O e Stream Support

Cell Values e Formulas

• Text functions (LEFT, MID, TRIM, SUBSTITUTE, …)
• Date e workday functions (DATE, NETWORKDAYS, WORKDAY, …)
• Engineering e base-conversion functions (BIN2DEC, HEX2DEC, …)
• Bitwise functions (BITAND, BITOR, BITXOR, …)
• Statistical e aggregate functions (AVERAGE, SUMIF, COUNTIFS, …)
• Math functions (ROUND, MOD, POWER, …)

Cell Formatting

• Fonts — name, size, color (RGB o theme color + tint), bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, shadow, e outline
• Alignment — horizontal e vertical alignment, text orientation (angle), indent level, wrap text, shrink-to-fit, e reading order (RTL/LTR)
• Borders — all four edges e diagonals, line style, weight, e RGB / theme color
• Interior (fill) — solid fill, pattern fills, foreground e background colors including theme color with TintAndShade
• Number formats — built-in e custom format strings for date, time, currency, percentage, e scientific notation
• Comments / annotations — add, read, e style cell comments

Range Operations

• Merge e unmerge cells; access the merged area of any cell
• Copy, move, insert, e delete ranges, with shift direction control
• Group e ungroup rows o columns for outline/collapse views
• AutoFit row height e column width to cell content
• Apply built-in named cell styles (ApplyBuiltinStyle)
• Multi-area selections (TXLSWorksheet.SelectAreas)
• ForEachCell iteration callback for batch cell processing

Worksheet Features

• Sheet name, tab color, visibility (hidden / very-hidden), e index-based navigation
• Sheet protection with per-permission granularity; workbook-level protection
• Freeze panes, split panes, e scroll position
• AutoFilter ranges with criteria; list data validation rules
• Conditional formatting: color scales (2 e 3 color), data bars, e icon sets
• Find-text e replace-text across a worksheet
• View options: gridline color, display formula mode, display zeros, display headings, display right-to-left, display outline symbols, e zoom level
• Structured tables (TXLSTable / TXLSXTable): add, access, e style Excel tables with header rows e banded rows
• Charts: add chart sheets e embedded charts via TXLSWorksheetsAddChartSheet e TXLSXChart

Hyperlinks e Named Ranges

Images e Shapes

Page Setup e Printing

• Paper size (A4, Letter, Legal, e many others; see PaperSize)
• Orientation (portrait / landscape), margins, center horizontally / vertically
• Header e footer strings with Excel formatting codes (bold, italic, page number, date, etc.; see Header/Footer formatting codes)
• Manual horizontal e vertical page breaks
• Fit-to-pages scaling; zoom percentage; print area; print titles (repeat rows / columns)
• Draft quality; black-e-white; print gridlines; print headings; print notes

Export Formats

• HTML — full document o an inline table fragment for preview o email workflows; controllable via TXLSHTMLExport e TXLSXHtmlExportOptions
• RTF — rich text for word-processor import
• CSV — comma-separated values with configurable delimiter e encoding
• TSV — tab-separated values
• ODS — OpenDocument Spreadsheet via the lxHandleX facade

Database e Grid Export

VBA Project Preservation

Unicode e International Text

Pivot Tables (Classic XLS)

No Office dependency	Reads e writes XLS e XLSX files directly at the binary level. Microsoft Excel o Office does not need to be installed, licensed, o running. This eliminates COM/OLE automation overhead, avoids threading restrictions imposed by Office interop, e allows HotXLS to be used in server-side e service contexts where a desktop Office installation is impractical
High performance	The BIFF8 e OOXML parsers are written in native Object Pascal with no intermediate XML DOM allocation for the hot path. Large workbooks with hundreds of thousands of rows can be read e written with low peak memory. Shared-string deduplication e shared-formula compression are applied automatically to keep file sizes small
OLE migration path	The classic-facade API surface (workbook, worksheet, range, font, borders, interior, page setup) closely mirrors the Excel object model familiar from OLE Automation. This makes migrating existing OLE-based projects straightforward: replace the COM calls with HotXLS calls, remove the Office dependency, e gain native performance
Dual-facade design	Legacy XLS code continues to compile e run unchanged against lxHandle while new XLSX code uses the richer lxHandleX facade. Migrating one file format at a time is safe e incremental
Formula engine included	A built-in multi-pass calculation engine handles the most common worksheet functions without requiring Excel to recalculate on open. Custom functions are handled through the OnUserFunction callback
Easy to use	Drop-in Delphi components (TDataToXLS, TGridToXLS) require no code for common export tasks. The fluent range API supports A1 notation, R1C1 notation, e zero-based row/column indexing
Thread-safe file I/O	Because there is no shared Office process, multiple TXLSXWorkbook instances can be created e saved concurrently on independent threads without synchronization, making HotXLS suitable for multi-threaded report generation servers

Delphi	XE5, XE6, XE7, XE8, 10 Seattle, 10.1 Berlin, 10.2 Tokyo, 10.3 Rio, 10.4 Sydney, 11 Alexandria, 12 Athens, 13 Florence
C++Builder	XE5, XE6, XE7, XE8, 10 Seattle, 10.1 Berlin, 10.2 Tokyo, 10.3 Rio, 10.4 Sydney, 11 Alexandria, 12 Athens, 13 Florence
Target platforms	Windows 32-bit e 64-bit
Excel file formats	XLS (BIFF8, Excel 97–2003), XLSX (OOXML, Excel 2007+), ODS (OpenDocument 1.2)
Export-only formats	HTML, RTF, CSV, TSV

• XLSX Facade Overview (lxHandleX) — full class hierarchy e XLSX/ODS-specific API members
• API Tour Demo — first demo to run when learning HotXLS from scratch
• IXLSWorkbook — classic XLS workbook interface reference
• TXLSWorksheet — classic XLS worksheet class reference
• IXLSRange — range interface: cell access, formatting, e operations
• TXLSXWorkbook — XLSX workbook class reference
• TXLSXWorksheet — XLSX worksheet class reference
• TGridToXLS — drop-in DBGrid-to-Excel export component
• TDataToXLS — drop-in dataset-to-Excel export component
• OnUserFunction callback — custom worksheet funzione extension point
• Classic XLS color model — palette-based color e theme color design rationale
• Classic XLS additional API members — calculation properties, document properties, pivot tables, e more
• Examples — sample projects overview
• Purchase Order Sample — full-featured XLS creation example with source code