Generating an excel sheet by click on website??

[i_never_existed]

Hi there.

I am trying to do the following on my website, and it is the first time I have attempted anything like this.

I have a button on my site. When someone clicks on the button I can of course in Dreamweaver tell it to mailto: or open another webpage...

... but what I NEED is that it opens up an invoice made in Excel.

Think that they are going to buy a book online, I need that when they click on the BUY ME button... that it generates an excel Invoice sheet to be sent to me.

Any ideas on how to go about this... please. I've lost 2 days trying to figure this out.


Thanks

[Ride9650]

thats not possible.

The only thing that you can really do is generate a page with all the buyer's info, etc, however nothing can be done to integrate that into excel.

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EDIT:

I apologize, there is apparently a solution! However its not automatic and requires that you have a basic understanding of how web servers work. But there are instructions and its usually pretty straightforward.

http://www.zen-cart.com/

when used with this

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&products_id=170

[design-is]

I've not done anything like it before but a google for "export HTML table to csv" came up with some interesting results which may be of use...

Will post back if I find anything else :)

/Doug

[i_never_existed]

I've not done anything like it before but a google for "export HTML table to csv" came up with some interesting results which may be of use...

Will post back if I fund anything else :)

/Doug

Thanks.

I mean, it doesn't have to generate an Excel exactly... but somekind of Invoice sheet or page. That they can see after clicking the BUY button. Once they have seen that, THEN I need it to generate an excel being sent to the reciever.

BUTTON--> Online Excel/page showing purchase--> Email being sent to company email with (hopefully) excel attached.

[kedruff]

Why an Excel file? What are you trying to accomplish with said Excel file? Is the Excel file an invoice? If it's an invoice, why not just a normal HTML file that they can print and submit with payment?

[design-is]

I know there are solutions which can produce PDFs - this could also be a better option. Though the above HTML email sounds best to me... Any reason why this wouldn't be appropriate?

Don't good ecommerce solutions already email the recipient with an 'invoice' message?

/Doug

[Cerebrus' Maw]

it is possible to make your browser support an excel sheet on its display page, so that it looks as if you user is looking at an excel document.

You need a good understanding of the technologies behind it (PHP, HTML, MySQL, XML)

But this page (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-phpexcel/index.html) has en excellent tutorial that I used to implement an excel formatted accounts page for our accounting department.

[i_never_existed]

Thanks guys... you've given me a lot to think about.

Am looking into all the info you've given me.

Thanks again!