How to export data to Excel in ASP.NET Core 3.0

When building web applications, you will often need to import or export data from or to Word or Excel documents. There are several ways to achieve this, and plenty of NuGet packages to work with Word or Excel. This article discusses how we can work with ClosedXML in ASP.NET Core to export data to Excel.

To work with the code examples provided in this article, you should have Visual Studio 2019 installed in your system. If you don’t already have a copy, you can download Visual Studio 2019 here.

Create an ASP.NET Core MVC project in Visual Studio

First off, let’s create an ASP.NET Core project in Visual Studio 2019. Assuming Visual Studio 2019 is installed in your system, follow the steps outlined below to create a new ASP.NET Core project in Visual Studio.

1. Launch the Visual Studio IDE.
2. Click on “Create new project.”
3. In the “Create new project” window, select “ASP.NET Core Web Application” from the list of templates displayed.
4. Click Next.
5. In the “Configure your new project” window, specify the name and location for the new project.
6. Optionally, select the “Place solution and project in the same directory” check box.
7. Click Create.
8. In the “Create a New ASP.NET Core Web Application” window shown next, select .NET Core as the runtime and ASP.NET Core 2.2 (or later) from the drop-down list at the top. I’ll be using ASP.NET Core 3.0. 
9. Select “Web Application (Model-View-Controller)” as the project template to create a new ASP.NET Core MVC application.
10. Ensure that the check boxes “Enable Docker Support” and “Configure for HTTPS” are unchecked as we won’t be using those features here.
11. Ensure that Authentication is set to “No Authentication” as we won’t be using authentication either.
12. Click Create.