title: Excel to PDF without office
body: <p>I need to generate PDF reports in a windows application I'm working on, and I do this by exporting an .xlsx file to pdf. I'm currently using interop for this, however: </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>I need to do this without requiring the users to buy software, so no microsoft office excel.</li>
  <li>I also can't use any heavy dependencies (like open/libre office).</li>
  <li>the application is in .NET winforms and is local (not dependent on an internet connection).</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Things I tried:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>I have tried iTextSharp but this gets really complicated with things
  like overflowing columns.</li>
  <li>Tried closedXML but there couldn't convert to PDF.</li>
  <li>(As mentioned earlier) Tried interop but couldn't find a way to make it independent on office.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Help would be appreciated, thank you in advance :) </p>
  
  <h2>edits:</h2>
  
  <p><strong>iTextSharp</strong>
     <p>
         I would use it except I need to export a big DataTable that has a variable number of
  columns (up to 30 columns), and if there are many columns then It gets really complicated
  to handle that column overflow, which was easy in interop.
     </p></p>
  
  <p><strong>Aspose</strong>
     <p>Appears to be too expensive, since I work for a small company that is currently very limited in resources.</p></p>