How to Build an Angular Excel (XLS/XLSX) Viewer

In this blog post, you’ll learn how to build an Angular Excel viewer using the PSPDFKit for Web SDK. You’ll open and view XLS and XLSX files directly in your web browser using client-side processing (no server required).

The image below shows what you’ll be building.

You can see a demo of this feature in action.

Opening and Rendering Office Documents in the Browser

PSPDFKit for Web brings support for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint formats to your application, without you or your users needing any MS Office software, MS Office licenses, or third-party open source software. The technology works by converting an Office document to PDF directly in the browser, and the document is then rendered in our JavaScript viewer.

Unlocking More Capabilities with Office-to-PDF Conversion

​​By converting an Office document to PDF using client-side JavaScript, you have the option to support a rich array of additional Office document functionality, such as:

• Text editing — Edit text directly in the displayed Office document.

• Page manipulation — Organize documents by adding, removing, or rearranging pages.

• Annotations — Boost collaboration by adding text highlights, comments, or stamps.

• Adding signatures — Draw, type, or upload a signature directly to an Office document.

Explore Demo

Creating a New Angular Project

Now you’ll see how to integrate PSPDFKit into your Angular project.

First, create a new Angular project for the PSPDFKit integration:

ng new pspdfkit-word-example

This will ask some configuration questions. Choose No for routing and CSS for the stylesheet. Now, change your directory to this project:

cd pspdfkit-word-example

Adding PSPDFKit

Install pspdfkit as a dependency with npm or yarn:

npm install pspdfkit

yarn add pspdfkit

Add the following to your angular.json file. Angular will copy the PSPDFKit library assets to the assets directory before running your app:

"assets": [
 "src/favicon.ico",
	"src/assets",
+   {
+  	"glob": "**/*",
+		"input": "./node_modules/pspdfkit/dist/pspdfkit-lib/",
+		"output": "./assets/pspdfkit-lib/"
+	}
]

Displaying an Excel Document

1. Add an Excel (XLS, XLSX) document you want to display to your project’s directory. You can use our demo document as an example.

2. Replace the contents of app.component.html with the following:

<div class="app">
	<!-- We'll mount the PSPDFKit UI to this element. -->
	<div
		id="pspdfkit-container"
		style="width: 100%; height: 100vh"
	></div>
</div>

2. Replace the contents of app.component.ts with the following:

import { Component } from '@angular/core';
import PSPDFKit from 'pspdfkit';

@Component({
	selector: 'app-root',
	templateUrl: './app.component.html',
	styleUrls: ['app.component.css'],
})
export class AppComponent {
	title = 'PSPDFKit for Web Angular Example';

	ngAfterViewInit() {
		PSPDFKit.load({
			// Use the assets directory URL as a base URL. PSPDFKit will download its library assets from here.
			baseUrl: location.protocol + '//' + location.host + '/assets/',
			document: '/assets/chart.xlsx',
			container: '#pspdfkit-container',
		}).then((instance) => {
			// For the sake of this demo, store the PSPDFKit for Web instance
			// on the global object so that you can open the dev tools and
			// play with the PSPDFKit API.
			(window as any).instance = instance;
		});
	}
}

The license key is optional; however, you may see a watermark on your images without a key. To get a key, contact Sales.

If you try to run your project, you may get an error stating the mounting container has no height. To fix this issue, add the following styles to the src/app/app.component.css file:

:host {
	height: 100%;
}

.app {
	position: fixed;
	width: 100%;
	height: 100%;
	top: 0;
	right: 0;
	bottom: 0;
	left: 0;
}

.toolbar {
	position: relative;
	display: flex;
	align-items: center;
	height: 64px;
	width: 100%;
	padding: 0 24px;
	box-shadow: 0 1px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);
	font-family: sans-serif;
	font-size: 20px;
	font-weight: 500;
	color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8);
}

.logo {
	margin-right: 20px;
}

.pspdfkit-container {
	height: calc(100% - 64px);
}

Start the app and open it in your default browser:

npm start

yarn start

Interact with the sandbox by clicking the left rectangle icon and selecting Editor > Show Default Layout. To edit, sign in with GitHub — click the rectangle icon again and choose Sign in. To preview the result, click the rectangle icon once more and choose Editor > Embed Preview. For the full example, click the Open Editor button. Enjoy experimenting with the project!

A Note about Fonts

When you convert an Office document with custom fonts to a PDF, PSPDFKit for Web might not have access to these fonts due to licensing constraints. In this case, PSPDFKit typically replaces unavailable fonts with their equivalents — like Arial with Noto.

Adding Even More Capabilities

Once you’ve deployed your viewer, you can start customizing it to meet your specific requirements or easily add more capabilities. To help you get started, here are some of our most popular Angular guides:

• Instant synchronization
• Document assembly
• Page manipulation
• Editor
• Forms
• Signatures
• Redaction
• Document security

Conclusion

In this blog post, you learned how to build an Excel viewer using Angular with the PSPDFKit SDK. It also discussed the benefits of using PSPDFKit for Web Standalone to render Office documents in the browser. If you hit any snags, don’t hesitate to reach out to our Support team for help.

You can also integrate our Angular Excel viewer using web frameworks like Vue.js and React.js. To see a list of all web frameworks, start your free trial. Or, launch our demo to see our viewer in action.