I need to read in data from excel files in my c# winforms app. Any recommendations on good components for this? I've used syncfusion some years ago and that seemed to do the trick.
There'll be a bunch of header lines I need to skip (so a straight ADO approach won't work easily) and then a table of data with standard columns but variable number of rows.
I'll be pumping the data into SQL Server db once it's read, but probably need to do validation etc on it before that.
thanks!
SpreadsheetGear for .NET will do it.
You can see ASP.NET samples with C# and VB source here and download the free trial here if you want to try it out.
Disclaimer: I own SpreadsheetGear LLC
Using ASPOSE Tools
Using ADO.NET
Do you need graphic support?
Im using the ComponentOne XLS component right now. It is pretty stable and does it job. Im using it for data integration too.
I also wanted to do some xls reports, however the API does not support the full excel stack (not even launching an excel instance) so i had to go over Mirosoft.Office.Interop
One of alternatives: MS Office Wrapper for .NET
you can use LINQ to XML also,
see the link below...
Video Tutorial
We're currently using Flexcel. It has some nice features including a tool for reading a spreadsheet and generating the necessary C# (or VB or Delphi) code to generate that sheet using their toolkit -- it makes designing a sheet a snap. The licensing wasn't expensive (site license for developers, redistribution free).
The only thing against it is that XLSX (Excel 2007 native format) compatibility is "real soon now".
Read this blog post on Reading and Writing Excel Spreadsheets.
Reading and Writing Excel Spreadsheets
You can do something like this:
// Connection String to Excel Workbook
string excelConnectionString = @"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" + fileName + ";Extended Properties=\"Excel 8.0;HDR=YES;\"";
OleDbDataAdapter oleDbDataAdapter = new OleDbDataAdapter("Select * FROM [Sheet1$]", excelConnectionString);
DataSet dataSet = new DataSet();
oleDbDataAdapter.Fill(dataSet);
Also see "SqlBulkCopy"
Ultimately we opted for Syncfusion's XLSIO which works well.
Thanks for the other suggestions too.