How to read data from excel file using c#

My application needs to read data from an excel file. I am using .Net and c# for development. I cannot install MS office in the system. Because of that the my application fails to read excel file and throws an error while loading the dll for excel.

How can i access excel file in my application in a system where ms office is not installed?

There is the option to use OleDB and use the Excel sheets like datatables in a database...

Just an example.....

string con =
  @"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=D:\temp\test.xls;" + 
  @"Extended Properties='Excel 8.0;HDR=Yes;'";    
using(OleDbConnection connection = new OleDbConnection(con))
{
    connection.Open();
    OleDbCommand command = new OleDbCommand("select * from [Sheet1$]", connection); 
    using(OleDbDataReader dr = command.ExecuteReader())
    {
         while(dr.Read())
         {
             var row1Col0 = dr[0];
             Console.WriteLine(row1Col0);
         }
    }
}

This example use the Microsoft.Jet.OleDb.4.0 provider to open and read the Excel file. However, if the file is of type xlsx (from Excel 2007 and later), then you need to download the Microsoft Access Database Engine components and install it on the target machine.

The provider is called Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;. Pay attention to the fact that there are two versions of this component, one for 32bit and one for 64bit. Choose the appropriate one for the bitness of your application and what Office version is installed (if any). There are a lot of quirks to have that driver correctly working for your application. See this question for example.

Of course you don't need Office installed on the target machine.

While this approach has some merits, I think you should pay particular attention to the link signaled by a comment in your question Reading excel files from C#. There are some problems regarding the correct interpretation of the data types and when the length of data, present in a single excel cell, is longer than 255 characters

CSharpJExcel for reading Excel 97-2003 files (XLS), ExcelPackage for reading Excel 2007/2010 files (Office Open XML format, XLSX), and ExcelDataReader that seems to have the ability to handle both formats

Good luck!

Save the Excel file to CSV, and read the resulting file with C# using a CSV reader library like FileHelpers.

I don't have a machine available to test this but it should work. First you will probably need to install the either the 2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components or the Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable. Then try the following code, note you will need to change the name of the Sheet in the Select statement below to match sheetname in your excel file:

using System.Data;
using System.Data.OleDb;

namespace Data_Migration_Process_Creator
{
    class Class1
    {
        private DataTable GetDataTable(string sql, string connectionString)
        {
            DataTable dt = null;

            using (OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection(connectionString))
            {
                conn.Open();
                using (OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(sql, conn))
                {
                    using (OleDbDataReader rdr = cmd.ExecuteReader())
                    {
                        dt.Load(rdr);
                        return dt;
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        private void GetExcel()
        {
            string fullPathToExcel = "<Path to Excel file>"; //ie C:\Temp\YourExcel.xls
            string connString = string.Format("Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source={0};Extended Properties='Excel 12.0;HDR=yes'", fullPathToExcel);
            DataTable dt = GetDataTable("SELECT * from [SheetName$]", connString);

            foreach (DataRow dr in dt.Rows)
            {
                //Do what you need to do with your data here
            }
        }
    }
}

Note: I don't have an environment to test this in (One with Office installed) so I can't say if it will work in your environment or not but I don't see why it shouldn't work.

Convert the excel file to .csv file (comma separated value file) and now you can easily be able to read it.