How to retrieve the excel file data without Interop? - c#

Can anyone suggest me an approach to retrieve the excel file details (Alternative of Interop)?
I want to track user working excel file details (like workbook name, sheet name, formula present in the sheet/workbook, Macro value.)

If the Excel file is an OpenXML file (XLSX or similar extensions), you could simply read it using Packaging in .NET. You have to extract all data yourself then, which is quite some work. You could use the DocumentFormat.OpenXml to make reading a little easier.
Another option is to use EPPlus, which effectively does the same, but saves you a lot of work.

Related

How to read a range of cells (e.g.A1:G30) from Excel file to GridView

I have been looking for a solution all over the last days and I found that this library EPPlus allows retrieving in the same time formatting besides the actual data, plus charts, if needed, from Excel files which is what I am aiming at the moment.
Could you please explain to me step by step how to read a Range of cells from an Excel (like A1:P34) file that resides at a certain path, via ASP.NET/C#?
PATH would be something like //ServerName/Folder1/Folder2/Folder3/ExcelFileName.xlsx
I looked over the web, but there is not explicit documentation for my level of C# expertise on this. I tried several examples but none displayed the Excel Range into the webpage. (e.g this one.)
Note: the three examples I have tried all included an File Upload Control, I do not need such. I want to read the Excel file from a specified location over the local network.
EPPlus library is available here.
If you can recommend me any simpler resources to understand EPPlus on:
-reading from Excel
-writing from Excel
-reading charts from Excel
This EPPlus does seem wonderful in its functionality.
To read a file off the server take a look at this:
Open ExcelPackage Object with Excel application without saving it on local file path
Just need to set the var path part for your file.
To actually put the excel data on a web page, that is not so easy. See this:
Generating a HTML table from an Excel file using EPPlus?
Response to Comment:
Hosting an actual excel sheet in web page is temperamental at best but there are ways to do it (I haven't tried it personally). SharePoint is probably your best option if you have it available. If not, you would have to use an iFrame or some kind of office web component. Check this out:
how to display excel sheet in html page

Is csv with multi tabs/sheet possible?

I am calling a web service and the data from the web service is in csv format.
If I try to save data in xls/xlsx, then I get multiple sheets in a workbook.
So, how can I save the data in csv with multipletab/sheets in c#.
I know csv with multiple tabs is not practical, but is there any damn way or any library to save data in csv with multiple tabs/sheet?
CSV, as a file format, assumes one "table" of data; in Excel terms that's one sheet of a workbook. While it's just plain text, and you can interpret it any way you want, the "standard" CSV format does not support what your supervisor is thinking.
You can fudge what you want a couple of ways:
Use a different file for each sheet, with related but distinct names, like "Book1_Sheet1", "Book1_Sheet2" etc. You can then find groups of related files by the text before the first underscore. This is the easiest to implement, but requires users to schlep around multiple files per logical "workbook", and if one gets lost in the shuffle you've lost that data.
Do the above, and also "zip" the files into a single archive you can move around. You keep the pure CSV advantage of the above option, plus the convenience of having one file to move instead of several, but the downside of having to zip/unzip the archive to get to the actual files. To ease the pain, if you're in .NET 4.5 you have access to a built-in ZipFile implementation, and if you are not you can use the open-source DotNetZip or SharpZipLib, any of which will allow you to programmatically create and consume standard Windows ZIP files. You can also use the nearly universal .tar.gz (aka .tgz) combination, but your users will need either your program or a third-party compression tool like 7Zip or WinRAR to create the archive from a set of exported CSVs.
Implement a quasi-CSV format where a blank line (containing only a newline) acts as a "tab separator", and your parser would expect a new line of column headers followed by data rows in the new configuration. This variant of standard CSV may not readable by other consumers of CSVs as it doesn't adhere to the expected file format, and as such I would recommend you don't use the ".csv" extension as it will confuse and frustrate users expecting to be able to open it in other applications like spreadsheets.
If I try to save data in xls/xlsx, then I get multiple sheets in a workbook.
Your answer is in your question, don't use text/csv (which most certainly can not do multiple sheets, it can't even do one sheet; there's no such thing as a sheet in text/csv though there is in how some applications like Excel or Calc choose to import it into a format that does have sheets) but save it as xls, xlsx, ods or another format that does have sheets.
Both XLSX and ODS are much more complicated than text/csv, but are each probably the most straightforward of their respective sets of formats.
I've been using this library for a while now,
https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx
in my projects to import data and structure from formats like: xls(x), csv and xml but you can for sure save in that formats as well (all from client)!
Hope that can help you,, take a look on online demo,
http://oss.sheetjs.com/js-xlsx/
peek in source code or file an issue on GH? but I think you will have to do most coding on youre own
I think you want to reduce the size of your excel file. If yes then you can do it by saving it as xlsb i.e., Excel Binary Workbook format. Further, you can reduce your file size by deleting all the blank cells.

Exporting to Excel without MS office installed for Wpf Product

I have a small wpf product which requires exporting data to excel with out excel installed on the client machine.How to achieve this in C#.After exporting, this excel can be opened by Open office. All I wanted is to save excel file to the client hard disk. Even excel is not installed he should be able to save the file,he may not be read it without excel but should be able to save. I dont want to any 3rd party or some other open xmls.
Recently I downloaded a product which is able to export to excel without excel installed and able to open it with open office.
When i checked their binaries they contain office.dll ,Microsoft.Vbe.Interop.dll and Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.dll's only .I want to know how they are able to manage with these dlls.
I have already written code for this but its breaking when excel is not installed.
I have read many open xml and other stuff relating to this but not satisfied.
My requirement is too simple ,just exporting datatable data to excel,no reading back the data and no fancy oparations with excel.
Please give me suggestions and links will be appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Either work out with CSV format or you may like to use EPPlus library. See similar answer here
You can use CSV, XML, or ADO
How To Use ADO.NET to Retrieve and Modify Records in an Excel Workbook With Visual Basic .NET
xslt transformation can also to the job. i use it to export wpf datagrid data.

Can we export Excel spreadsheet into XML and apply stylesheet to transform to another format?

I have an excel spreadsheet which has one worksheet. The work sheet has 50 columns and 1000+ rows. And I want to transform the data inside the excel spreadsheet into another custom format.
Is it possible to use xml+xslt to transform the data inside the excel worksheet into another format - as I've recently read that excel data is xml under the hood?
My programming language of choice is C# (incase that is required)
Thank you
in theory yes but I think this could be rather complex...
Another approach is to use OpenXML SDK from MS - see http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=5124
For some starting points
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb456488.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17985
http://openxmldeveloper.org/blog/b/openxmldeveloper/archive/2009/06/02/4730.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/office/ExcelOpenXMLSDK.aspx
IF you need more (like rendering to high-quality PDF etc.) then there are several 3rd-party libraries available (like Flexcel, Aspose.Cells, SpreadsheetGear...).

C# output to Excel spreadsheet, using Excel 2000+

I'm writing a program that reads a text file, extracts information, and outputs it to a template Excel spreadsheet that already exists.
I've managed to do this on my computer using the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel reference and its related methods, and it works fine. I have Excel 2010. However the computers that this program will be used on mostly have either Excel 2000 or Excel 2003, and it won't work on them.
Does anyone know a way to make a program target all versions of Excel from 2000 upwards?
Cheers,
Greg
If your needs are simple and you don't have $900 for Aspose.Cells to throw around, you can do any of the following:
Use NPOI to read, inject data into, and export your template.
Create a basic HTML file with a table and just named it *.xls. You can save your template in Excel as HTML and replace bits and pieces to insert your data.
Create an XML file using Office 2002/2003 XML format, it's pretty straightforward (caveat: can't be read in Excel 2000). As above, you can save your template in XML Spreadsheet format, read it in, and do some simple stuff to inject your data.
You really need to target 2000 or under. 2010 and 2003 will open a 2000 format document whereas 2000 will not open a 2010 document. Office has a single format for 97-2000 and that's what you need to create to make everybody happy.
Interop depends on the version you have installed and I personally have dodged using interop due to its "unmanaged" nature (and it seems to love file locks).
If you want hassle free and extremely fast/powerful creation of Excel documents, you really can not do better than Aspose.Cells in my opinion.
Find it here.

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