Develop Reference

.NET & EEPlus: How do I read an Excel .xlsm file and then make changes to it?

I have a project where my goal is to produce an .xlsm Excel spreadsheet using .NET and the EEPlus 5.8.14 Excel Spreadsheet library. I can do this using EEPlus's documented techniques, (though some of these I cannot get to work). As I was working on this, I realized that what my code needed to do was relatively small, and it made sense to use an existing .xlsm file as a template and just make changes to what I needed to change using EEPlus.
So now I am including the .xlsm file as a resource compiled into the assembly. This works great, and I can read the file from the resources and produce it from my controller. But once read, this data inside EPPlus seems to be read-only. So while this produces an Excel file:
public ActionResult ExcelFile(){
const string ContentType = "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet";
Byte[] bytes = Properties.Resources.AssetsEntry;
string fstem = Path.GetRandomFileName();
int unique = 0;
string filePath = String.Format("{0}#AutoGen_{1}_{2}.{3}", Path.GetTempPath(), fstem, ++unique, "xlsm");
var outStream = System.IO.File.OpenWrite(filePath);
var writer = new BinaryWriter(outStream);
writer.Write(bytes);
outStream.Close();
ExcelPackage excelPackage = new ExcelPackage(filePath);
var sheet = excelPackage.Workbook.Worksheets[1];
//place where I might want to change data
//sheet.Cells["B3"].Value = "testing";
var excelData = excelPackage.GetAsByteArray();
var fileName = "ExcelFile.xlsm";
return File(excelData, ContentType, fileName);
}
If I try to uncomment out the second commented-out line, that code fails to change the resulting Excel spreadsheet (though there is no error). How do I go about reading in an Excel spreadsheet and making changes using EEPlus?
UPDATE: I can add new worksheets to an uploaded spreadsheet, and I can alter those added sheets. But I cannot alter data on uploaded worksheets. Fortunately, for this particular project, that is acceptable. But it would be frustrating if I wanted to be able to set up a worksheet in Excel and then populate it programmatically.

file data seems to be corrupted when reading file as a string

I'm trying to read a file as string. But it seems that the data is corrupted.
string filepaths = Files[0].FullName;
System.IO.StreamReader myFile = new System.IO.StreamReader(filepaths);
string datas = myFile.ReadToEnd();
but in datas, it contains "pk0101" etc instead of original data. I'm doing this so I can replace a placeholder with this string data,datas. And finally when I replace,gets replaced text as 0101 etc. Is it because of the content in datas. How can I read the file as string. Your help will be greatly appreciated. Thank You.

*.docx is a file format which in raw view represents xml document. Take a look here to become more familiar with this format definition.
For working with office formats Microsoft recommends to use Open Xml SDK at DocumentFormat.OpenXml library.
Here is a great article for learning how to work with Word files.
It works as follows:
using (var wordDocument = WordprocessingDocument.Open(string.Empty, false))
{
var body = wordDocument.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body;
var text = body.GetFirstChild<Paragraph>().InnerText;
}
Also, take a look at this SO question: How do I read data from a word with format using the OpenXML Format SDK with c#?

Insert Object data to local xml file

I found this great tutorial for loading XML using XLINQ (LINQ to XML).
http://www.codearsenal.net/2012/07/c-sharp-load-xml-using-xlinq.html
It helped me a lot and I got the job done with it.
The only change I made was where he had this line:
from e in XDocument.Load(#"..\..\Employees.xml").Root.Elements("employee")
I write it like this:
from el in XDocument.Load("XML_Files/Employees.xml").Root.Elements("employee")
I had to change the path like this to access a local xml file found right inside my Visual Studio project.
But now I need to save the data back to the file in my project solution. Again, my xml file is located inside my C# project. It's not on the desktop or anything, it is a file added to the project solution.
I can't seem to find any good resources for how to do this task. Does anyone know a good tutorial, or code, a reference to start?
I am inserting a list of objects into the xml files. The objects have basic data type properties, except for one of the object properties, which is a List of doubles.
Can anyone advise a good tutorial or link? Or even a generic code sample?
I'd like to keep this function as basic as possible.
Please help.
------------------ UPDATE ------------------
I actually got this kind of working now. The below code does what I need EXCEPT that it won't write the data to my local file in the Visual Studio project. It will gladly write the data to a test file I created on my desktop, however.
Does anyone know why this is??
//create the serialiser to create the xml
XmlSerializer serialiser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<Student>));
// Create the TextWriter for the serialiser to use
TextWriter Filestream = new StreamWriter(#"C:\\Users\\MyName\\Desktop\\output.xml");
//write to the file
serialiser.Serialize(Filestream, employees);
// Close the file
Filestream.Close();
-------- UPDATE ---------
Okay, figured it out.
This code works:
public void WriteXML()
{
//create the serialiser to create the xml
XmlSerializer serialiser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<Student>));
// Create the TextWriter for the serialiser to use
TextWriter Filestream = new StreamWriter(#"XML_Files\Employees.xml");
//write to the file
serialiser.Serialize(Filestream, employees);
// Close the file
Filestream.Close();
}
The data is inserted to the xml file, but it does not show in Visual Studio. But when I checked here:
C:\Users\Me\Desktop\MyProject\MyProject\bin\Debug\XML_Files
The file is overwritten.
Also, when I reload the data from the application again, the new entries come up.

The problem is in line:
TextWriter Filestream = new StreamWriter(#"C:\\Users\\MyName\\Desktop\\output.xml");
Change it to one of following:
TextWriter Filestream = new StreamWriter("C:\\Users\\MyName\\Desktop\\output.xml");
TextWriter Filestream = new StreamWriter(#"C:\Users\MyName\Desktop\output.xml");
Simply remove the "#", OR use single slashes:

XML header missing after converting an XML file into a Binary Format File

I have a problem. I have an XML spreadsheet file that I'm trying to send via email. So I converted into a binary file and attached it to an email. The problem is when I'm trying to open it (on Excel), it's not showing the data that I saved. When I opened it like an XML file I realized that it didn't saved the XML header:
The way it should be:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?mso-application progid="Excel.Sheet"?>
<Workbook xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
...
<Styles>
...
</Styles>
<Worksheet>
...
</Worksheet></Workbook>
after converting:
<Worksheet>
...
</Worksheet>
I've tried to use an xmldocument but i wasn't working, I also tried using a string, still not working. This is how I convert the XML to binary:
UTF8Encoding encoding = new UTF8Encoding();
binaryFile = encoding.GetBytes(xmlFile);
How can I fix this problem?
Thanks.

I think we need more information on how you're converting the XML file.
From your description it sounds like you've saved an Excel Spreadsheet to XML and for whatever reason you cannot just attach this text document to an email. My guess is you're using a method to attach the XML file that requires a byte array and can't just be provided a file location. If you could provide more information on this, it would help us figure out where things are going wrong for you.
The part I'm really stuck on is:
I've tried to use an xmldocument but i wasn't working, I also tried
using a string, still not working.
How did you try string? Did you read the file from disk using FileStream? If so, you should have been able to retrieve the full contents of the file.
Were you using XmlDocument the whole time and trying XmlDocument.OuterXml? This probably won't give you the control headers since they're not part of the XML body inside the root node.
So really there are two things I would have tried. First, if I had an XML file on disk and needed to attach it to an email through code and my only option was to provide a byte array, I'd do something like:
using (FileStream fs = new FileStream("", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
{
byte[] binaryFile = new byte[fs.Length];
fs.Read(binaryFile, 0, buff.LongLength);
//Copy the byte array to your email object.
}
Now if this isn't what you're doing, you'll need to provide a lot more detail on what you are starting with (file on disk?), what you need to do (send automated email?), what constraints you have and any other information that would limit potential solutions.

I've found my mistake: I didn't serialized the XML file so that's why after the conversion it just shows the data without the XML header. so there's 2 ways to resolve this problem:
first, we can concatenate the header with the data string, or we can use the serialize function. This is where I've found how to do it.

How to paste CSV data to Windows Clipboard with C#

What I'm trying to accomplish
My app generates some tabular data
I want the user to be able to launch Excel and click "paste" to place the data as cells in Excel
Windows accepts a format called "CommaSeparatedValue" that is used with it's APIs so this seems possible
Putting raw text on the clipboard works, but trying to use this format does not
NOTE: I can correctly retrieve CSV data from the clipboard, my problem is about pasting CSV data to the clipboard.
What I have tried that isn't working
Clipboard.SetText()
System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard.SetText(
"1,2,3,4\n5,6,7,8",
System.Windows.Forms.TextDataFormat.CommaSeparatedValue
);
Clipboard.SetData()
System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard.SetData(
System.Windows.Forms.DataFormats.CommaSeparatedValue,
"1,2,3,4\n5,6,7,8",
);
In both cases something is placed on the clipboard, but when pasted into Excel it shows up as one cell of garbarge text: "–§žý;pC¦yVk²ˆû"
Update 1: Workaround using SetText()
As BFree's answer shows SetText with TextDataFormat serves as a workaround
System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard.SetText(
"1\t2\t3\t4\n5\t6\t7\t8",
System.Windows.Forms.TextDataFormat.Text
);
I have tried this and confirm that now pasting into Excel and Word works correctly. In each case it pastes as a table with cells instead of plaintext.
Still curious why CommaSeparatedValue is not working.

The .NET Framework places DataFormats.CommaSeparatedValue on the clipboard as Unicode text. But as mentioned at http://www.syncfusion.com/faq/windowsforms/faq_c98c.aspx#q899q, Excel expects CSV data to be a UTF-8 memory stream (it is difficult to say whether .NET or Excel is at fault for the incompatibility).
The solution I've come up with in my own application is to place two versions of the tabular data on the clipboard simultaneously as tab-delimited text and as a CSV memory stream. This allows the destination application to acquire the data in its preferred format. Notepad and Excel prefer the tab-delimited text, but you can force Excel to grab the CSV data via the Paste Special... command for testing purposes.
Here is some example code (note that WinForms-equivalents from the WPF namespaces are used here):
// Generate both tab-delimited and CSV strings.
string tabbedText = //...
string csvText = //...
// Create the container object that will hold both versions of the data.
var dataObject = new System.Windows.DataObject();
// Add tab-delimited text to the container object as is.
dataObject.SetText(tabbedText);
// Convert the CSV text to a UTF-8 byte stream before adding it to the container object.
var bytes = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(csvText);
var stream = new System.IO.MemoryStream(bytes);
dataObject.SetData(System.Windows.DataFormats.CommaSeparatedValue, stream);
// Copy the container object to the clipboard.
System.Windows.Clipboard.SetDataObject(dataObject, true);

Use tabs instead of commas. ie:
Clipboard.SetText("1\t2\t3\t4\t3\t2\t3\t4", TextDataFormat.Text);
Just tested this myself, and it worked for me.

I have had success pasting into Excel using \t (see BFree's answer) as column separators and \n as row separators.

I got the most success defeating formatting issues by using a CSV library (KBCsv) to write the data into a CSV file in the temp folder then open it in Excel with Process.Start(). Once it is in Excel the formatting bit is easy(er), copy-paste from there.
string filePath = System.IO.Path.GetTempPath() + Guid.NewGuid().ToString() + ".csv";
using (var streamWriter = new StreamWriter(filePath))
using (CsvWriter csvWriter = new CsvWriter(streamWriter))
{
// optional header
csvWriter.WriteRecord(new List<string>(){"Heading1", "Heading2", "YouGetTheIdea" });
csvWriter.ValueSeparator = ',';
foreach (var thing in YourListOfThings ?? new List<OfThings>())
{
if (thing != null)
{
List<string> csvLine = new List<string>
{
thing.Property1, thing.Property2, thing.YouGetTheIdea
};
csvWriter.WriteRecord(csvLine);
}
}
}
Process.Start(filePath);
BYO Error handing & logging.