Locked. This question and its answers are locked because the question is off-topic but has historical significance. It is not currently accepting new answers or interactions.
Is there a free or open source library to read Excel files (.xls) directly from a C# program?
It does not need to be too fancy, just to select a worksheet and read the data as strings. So far, I've been using Export to Unicode text function of Excel, and parsing the resulting (tab-delimited) file, but I'd like to eliminate the manual step.
var fileName = string.Format("{0}\\fileNameHere", Directory.GetCurrentDirectory());
var connectionString = string.Format("Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0; data source={0}; Extended Properties=Excel 8.0;", fileName);
var adapter = new OleDbDataAdapter("SELECT * FROM [workSheetNameHere$]", connectionString);
var ds = new DataSet();
adapter.Fill(ds, "anyNameHere");
DataTable data = ds.Tables["anyNameHere"];
This is what I usually use. It is a little different because I usually stick a AsEnumerable() at the edit of the tables:
var data = ds.Tables["anyNameHere"].AsEnumerable();
as this lets me use LINQ to search and build structs from the fields.
var query = data.Where(x => x.Field<string>("phoneNumber") != string.Empty).Select(x =>
new MyContact
{
firstName= x.Field<string>("First Name"),
lastName = x.Field<string>("Last Name"),
phoneNumber =x.Field<string>("Phone Number"),
});
If it is just simple data contained in the Excel file you can read the data via ADO.NET. See the connection strings listed here:
http://www.connectionstrings.com/?carrier=excel2007
or
http://www.connectionstrings.com/?carrier=excel
-Ryan
Update: then you can just read the worksheet via something like select * from [Sheet1$]
The ADO.NET approach is quick and easy, but it has a few quirks which you should be aware of, especially regarding how DataTypes are handled.
This excellent article will help you avoid some common pitfalls:
http://blog.lab49.com/archives/196
This is what I used for Excel 2003:
Dictionary<string, string> props = new Dictionary<string, string>();
props["Provider"] = "Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0";
props["Data Source"] = repFile;
props["Extended Properties"] = "Excel 8.0";
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> prop in props)
{
sb.Append(prop.Key);
sb.Append('=');
sb.Append(prop.Value);
sb.Append(';');
}
string properties = sb.ToString();
using (OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection(properties))
{
conn.Open();
DataSet ds = new DataSet();
string columns = String.Join(",", columnNames.ToArray());
using (OleDbDataAdapter da = new OleDbDataAdapter(
"SELECT " + columns + " FROM [" + worksheet + "$]", conn))
{
DataTable dt = new DataTable(tableName);
da.Fill(dt);
ds.Tables.Add(dt);
}
}
How about Excel Data Reader?
http://exceldatareader.codeplex.com/
I've used in it anger, in a production environment, to pull large amounts of data from a variety of Excel files into SQL Server Compact. It works very well and it's rather robust.
Here's some code I wrote in C# using .NET 1.1 a few years ago. Not sure if this would be exactly what you need (and may not be my best code :)).
using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.OleDb;
namespace ExportExcelToAccess
{
/// <summary>
/// Summary description for ExcelHelper.
/// </summary>
public sealed class ExcelHelper
{
private const string CONNECTION_STRING = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=<FILENAME>;Extended Properties=\"Excel 8.0;HDR=Yes;\";";
public static DataTable GetDataTableFromExcelFile(string fullFileName, ref string sheetName)
{
OleDbConnection objConnection = new OleDbConnection();
objConnection = new OleDbConnection(CONNECTION_STRING.Replace("<FILENAME>", fullFileName));
DataSet dsImport = new DataSet();
try
{
objConnection.Open();
DataTable dtSchema = objConnection.GetOleDbSchemaTable(OleDbSchemaGuid.Tables, null);
if( (null == dtSchema) || ( dtSchema.Rows.Count <= 0 ) )
{
//raise exception if needed
}
if( (null != sheetName) && (0 != sheetName.Length))
{
if( !CheckIfSheetNameExists(sheetName, dtSchema) )
{
//raise exception if needed
}
}
else
{
//Reading the first sheet name from the Excel file.
sheetName = dtSchema.Rows[0]["TABLE_NAME"].ToString();
}
new OleDbDataAdapter("SELECT * FROM [" + sheetName + "]", objConnection ).Fill(dsImport);
}
catch (Exception)
{
//raise exception if needed
}
finally
{
// Clean up.
if(objConnection != null)
{
objConnection.Close();
objConnection.Dispose();
}
}
return dsImport.Tables[0];
#region Commented code for importing data from CSV file.
// string strConnectionString = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;" +"Data Source=" + System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(fullFileName) +";" +"Extended Properties=\"Text;HDR=YES;FMT=Delimited\"";
//
// System.Data.OleDb.OleDbConnection conText = new System.Data.OleDb.OleDbConnection(strConnectionString);
// new System.Data.OleDb.OleDbDataAdapter("SELECT * FROM " + System.IO.Path.GetFileName(fullFileName).Replace(".", "#"), conText).Fill(dsImport);
// return dsImport.Tables[0];
#endregion
}
/// <summary>
/// This method checks if the user entered sheetName exists in the Schema Table
/// </summary>
/// <param name="sheetName">Sheet name to be verified</param>
/// <param name="dtSchema">schema table </param>
private static bool CheckIfSheetNameExists(string sheetName, DataTable dtSchema)
{
foreach(DataRow dataRow in dtSchema.Rows)
{
if( sheetName == dataRow["TABLE_NAME"].ToString() )
{
return true;
}
}
return false;
}
}
}
Koogra is an open-source component written in C# that reads and writes Excel files.
While you did specifically ask for .xls, implying the older file formats, for the OpenXML formats (e.g. xlsx) I highly recommend the OpenXML SDK (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb448854.aspx)
I did a lot of reading from Excel files in C# a while ago, and we used two approaches:
The COM API, where you access Excel's objects directly and manipulate them through methods and properties
The ODBC driver that allows to use Excel like a database.
The latter approach was much faster: reading a big table with 20 columns and 200 lines would take 30 seconds via COM, and half a second via ODBC. So I would recommend the database approach if all you need is the data.
Cheers,
Carl
ExcelMapper is an open source tool (http://code.google.com/p/excelmapper/) that can be used to read Excel worksheets as Strongly Typed Objects. It supports both xls and xlsx formats.
I want to show a simple method to read xls/xlsx file with .NET. I hope that the following will be helpful for you.
private DataTable ReadExcelToTable(string path)
{
//Connection String
string connstring = "Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=" + path + ";Extended Properties='Excel 8.0;HDR=NO;IMEX=1';";
//the same name
//string connstring = Provider=Microsoft.JET.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" + path + //";Extended Properties='Excel 8.0;HDR=NO;IMEX=1';";
using(OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection(connstring))
{
conn.Open();
//Get All Sheets Name
DataTable sheetsName = conn.GetOleDbSchemaTable(OleDbSchemaGuid.Tables,new object[]{null,null,null,"Table"});
//Get the First Sheet Name
string firstSheetName = sheetsName.Rows[0][2].ToString();
//Query String
string sql = string.Format("SELECT * FROM [{0}]",firstSheetName);
OleDbDataAdapter ada =new OleDbDataAdapter(sql,connstring);
DataSet set = new DataSet();
ada.Fill(set);
return set.Tables[0];
}
}
Code is from article: http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/uploadfile/d2dcfc/read-excel-file-with-net/. You can get more details from it.
Not free, but with the latest Office there's a very nice automation .Net API. (there has been an API for a long while but was nasty COM) You can do everything you want / need in code all while the Office app remains a hidden background process.
Forgive me if I am off-base here, but isn't this what the Office PIA's are for?
Lately, partly to get better at LINQ.... I've been using Excel's automation API to save the file as XML Spreadsheet and then get process that file using LINQ to XML.
SpreadsheetGear for .NET is an Excel compatible spreadsheet component for .NET. You can see what our customers say about performance on the right hand side of our product page. You can try it yourself with the free, fully-functional evaluation.
SmartXLS is another excel spreadsheet component which support most features of excel Charts,formulas engines, and can read/write the excel2007 openxml format.
The .NET component Excel Reader .NET may satisfy your requirement. It's good enought for reading XLSX and XLS files. So try it from:
http://www.devtriogroup.com/ExcelReader
I recommend the FileHelpers Library which is a free and easy to use .NET library to import/export data from EXCEL, fixed length or delimited records in files, strings or streams + More.
The Excel Data Link Documentation Section
http://filehelpers.sourceforge.net/example_exceldatalink.html
You can try using this open source solution that makes dealing with Excel a lot more cleaner.
http://excelwrapperdotnet.codeplex.com/
SpreadsheetGear is awesome. Yes it's an expense, but compared to twiddling with these other solutions, it's worth the cost. It is fast, reliable, very comprehensive, and I have to say after using this product in my fulltime software job for over a year and a half, their customer support is fantastic!
The solution that we used, needed to:
Allow Reading/Writing of Excel produced files
Be Fast in performance (not like using COMs)
Be MS Office Independent (needed to be usable without clients having MS Office installed)
Be Free or Open Source (but actively developed)
There are several choices, but we found NPoi (.NET port of Java's long existing Poi open source project) to be the best:
http://npoi.codeplex.com/
It also allows working with .doc and .ppt file formats
If it's just tabular data. I would recommend file data helpers by Marcos Melli which can be downloaded here.
Late to the party, but I'm a fan of LinqToExcel
you could write an excel spreadsheet that loads a given excel spreadsheet and saves it as csv (rather than doing it manually).
then you could automate that from c#.
and once its in csv, the c# program can grok that.
(also, if someone asks you to program in excel, it's best to pretend you don't know how)
(edit: ah yes, rob and ryan are both right)
I know that people have been making an Excel "extension" for this purpose.
You more or less make a button in Excel that says "Export to Program X", and then export and send off the data in a format the program can read.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186213.aspx should be a good place to start.
Good luck
Just did a quick demo project that required managing some excel files. The .NET component from GemBox software was adequate for my needs. It has a free version with a few limitations.
http://www.gemboxsoftware.com/GBSpreadsheet.htm
Excel Package is an open-source (GPL) component for reading/writing Excel 2007 files. I used it on a small project, and the API is straightforward. Works with XLSX only (Excel 200&), not with XLS.
The source code also seems well-organized and easy to get around (if you need to expand functionality or fix minor issues as I did).
At first, I tried the ADO.Net (Excel connection string) approach, but it was fraught with nasty hacks -- for instance if second row contains a number, it will return ints for all fields in the column below and quietly drop any data that doesn't fit.
We use ClosedXML in rather large systems.
Free
Easy to install
Straight forward coding
Very responsive support
Developer team is extremly open to new suggestions. Often new features and bug fixes are implemented within the same week
Take.io Spreadsheet will do this work for you, and at no charge. Just take a look at this.
I just used ExcelLibrary to load an .xls spreadsheet into a DataSet. Worked great for me.
I'm pretty new to C# and Visual Studio. I'm writing a small program that will read a .csv file and then write the records read to a SQL Server database table.
I can manually parse the .csv file, but I was wondering if it is possible to somehow "describe" the .csv file to Visual Studio so that I can use it as a data source? I should mention that the first two lines in the .csv file contain header information and the following lines are the actual comma-delimited data.
Also, I should mention that this program is a stand-alone console program with no user interface.
This is a great example of using the power of LINQ. Here's a quick reference with an example of how to do it.
The run down is this. You can read in your CSV to a string array, then use LINQ to query against that collection. As Reed points out though, you'll have to code around your header line, as it will throw off your query.
You can also use the TextFieldParser too to handle escaping commas. Here's an example on thinqlinq that uses the TextFieldParser to parse the file, and a LINQ query to get the results. It even has a unit test to make sure escaped commas are handled.
If you have a 2 line header, it's not a standard CSV file.
In this case, the automatic tools won't work, and you'll have to revert to parsing the file manually.
If you want to remove one of the header lines, you might be able to use this technique of parsing CSV files into an ADO.NET DataTable.
If not, however, the TextFieldParser in the Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll assembly (usable from C# too) makes parsing CSV files very simple.
To parse it manually is very simple, and you could have a program that parses it, strips out the first two unnecessary lines and then feeds it directly to SSIS.
Here is a link for using LINQ to read it in:
http://blogs.msdn.com/wriju/archive/2009/05/24/linq-to-csv-getting-data-the-way-you-want.aspx
Using The Built In OLEDB CSV Parser via C# in order to parse a CVS file.
You can find a sample here
It basically lets you treat the csv file like a database table.
The link in Development 4.0's post has dissapeared. The code in that link was the following:
class CSVParser
{
public static DataTable ParseCSV(string path)
{
if (!File.Exists(path))
return null;
string full = Path.GetFullPath(path);
string file = Path.GetFileName(full);
string dir = Path.GetDirectoryName(full);
//create the "database" connection string
string connString = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;"
+ "Data Source=\"" + dir + "\\\";"
+ "Extended Properties=\"text;HDR=No;FMT=Delimited\"";
//create the database query
string query = "SELECT * FROM " + file;
//create a DataTable to hold the query results
DataTable dTable = new DataTable();
//create an OleDbDataAdapter to execute the query
OleDbDataAdapter dAdapter = new OleDbDataAdapter(query, connString);
try
{
//fill the DataTable
dAdapter.Fill(dTable);
}
catch (InvalidOperationException /*e*/)
{ }
dAdapter.Dispose();
return dTable;
}
}
}