Accessing Data in an Excel File using .Net

In this article I will show how you can open Microsoft Excel files using .Net.
You can use OLE objects to access data in Excel files as of you are accessing SQL Server data using SQL objects.

// Create an OLEDBConnection to connect to the Excel file.
// I'm getting the required file by using a file dialog.
// The @ symbol makes the string to contain any special characters inside the string without breaking the string.
OleDbConnection dbConnection = new OleDbConnection(@"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" + openFileDialog1.FileName.ToString()+ @";Extended Properties=""Excel 8.0;HDR=Yes;""");
// Open the connection.
dbConnection.Open();
// Create a command object to work on the data.
// Note that I have given the sheet name as [Sheet1$] to retrieve data from that named sheet in the particular Excel file.
OleDbCommand dbCommand = new OleDbCommand("SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]", dbConnection);
// Creating a data reader to read data.
OleDbDataReader dbReader = dbCommand.ExecuteReader();
// Get the position of the column Desc 1.
int SearchingItem = dbReader.GetOrdinal("Desc 1");
// Read through the data.
while (dbReader.Read())
{
// Traverse through all the data columns.
for (int i = 0; i <>
{
ExcelSheet.Cells[CurrentRowCount, i + 1] = dbReader.GetValue(i).ToString();
}
}