title: Can excel sheet be read by Ajax request
body: <p>I want to read an excel file using <code>JavaScript</code>. As we all know, IE supports following logic to read. </p>
  
  <pre><code>var excel = new ActiveXObject("Excel.Application"); 
  var excel_file = excel.Workbooks.Open("attachData.xlsx"); 
  var excel_sheet = excel.Worksheets("Sheet1"); 
  repCount = excel_sheet.Cells(cell,row).Value; 
  document.getElementById('div1').innerText = repCount; 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But I want to make it cross-browser.Since the above lines of code does not work in other browsers, I was thinking to use Ajax request. I tried with the following piece of code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>   var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
     xhr.open('POST','../attachData.xlsx',true);       
     xhr.send();
     xhr.onreadystatechange= readystatechange;
  
     function readystatechange(){
       if(xhr.readyState === 4){
         console.log(xhr.response);
       }
     }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here, the response comes <code>unreadable</code> format ( like <code>encoded</code>).Is there any other way to achieve this. My biggest concern is that can we read excel by ajax or not?</p>