I realize this question was asked nearly 7 years ago but it's still a top Google search result for certain keywords regarding importing excel data with C#, so I wanted to provide an alternative based on some recent tech developments.
Importing Excel data has become such a common task to my everyday duties, that I've streamlined the process and documented the method on my blog: best way to read excel file in c#.
I use NPOI because it can read/write Excel files without Microsoft Office installed and it doesn't use COM+ or any interops. That means it can work in the cloud!
But the real magic comes from pairing up with NPOI Mapper from Donny Tian because it allows me to map the Excel columns to properties in my C# classes without writing any code. It's beautiful.
Here is the basic idea:
I create a .net class that matches/maps the Excel columns I'm interested in:
class CustomExcelFormat
{
[Column("District")]
public int District { get; set; }
[Column("DM")]
public string FullName { get; set; }
[Column("Email Address")]
public string EmailAddress { get; set; }
[Column("Username")]
public string Username { get; set; }
public string FirstName
{
get
{
return Username.Split('.')[0];
}
}
public string LastName
{
get
{
return Username.Split('.')[1];
}
}
}
Notice, it allows me to map based on column name if I want to!
Then when I process the excel file all I need to do is something like this:
public void Execute(string localPath, int sheetIndex)
{
IWorkbook workbook;
using (FileStream file = new FileStream(localPath, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
{
workbook = WorkbookFactory.Create(file);
}
var importer = new Mapper(workbook);
var items = importer.Take<CustomExcelFormat>(sheetIndex);
foreach(var item in items)
{
var row = item.Value;
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(row.EmailAddress))
continue;
UpdateUser(row);
}
DataContext.SaveChanges();
}
Now, admittedly, my code does not modify the Excel file itself. I am instead saving the data to a database using Entity Framework (that's why you see "UpdateUser" and "SaveChanges" in my example). But there is already a good discussion on SO about how to save/modify a file using NPOI.
DataTableto sheet and exporting sheet toDataTable. – Hairy