There have been a few links via del.icio.us today to a forum posting detailing Working with Excel Files in PHP (the same tutorial can be found here as well).

Here is how to work with Excel files and PHP.

First you will need to understand what CSV means. CSV stands for "Comma Separated Values." Whenever you save a file in Excel, it is saved in binary form and can't be opened by other programs as if it was a text file.

They only briefly cover how to import values into PHP from Excel (via a CSV file), and they largely focus on two methods to create the files for the end users - make it and store it on the server, and push the file out for download on demand. Comments and questions on the methods can be directed back to the forums...