I wrote this article to answer a question asked about how to connect to an excel file as a data source for a given application, I provide the solution via this ten steps walkthrough.
Walkthrough:
Let's begin by creating an Excel file and configuring an ODBC connection
- Open an Excel file and populate some of its cells then save it somewhere
- Go to Start>Configuration panel>Administration tools> ODBC icon
- Open it then select the tag data source system
Figure 1
- Click add, then the following window Appears
Figure 2
- Select the Driver do Microsoft Excel(*.xls)
- Then Apply and the bellow window appears
Figure 3
- In the first field, define the Name or the alias going to be used, say we name it EXCEL for example, in the second field you can put a note according to this alias then click the button select a file, it helps you to browse to your given excel file then click ok, now the ODBC connection is ready to be used, this is the window after filling settings:
Figure 4
- Now, as our connection is ready to be used let's create a new Windows application project and add a data grid view, a button, and a label into the form that will appear like the bellow form:
Figure 5
Change the name of the button to btnconnect and change its text to "Connect to Excel data source", then change the label text to "".
- Add this code to the button click event handler.
- private void btnConnect_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {
- OdbcConnection oConn = new OdbcConnection();
- oConn.ConnectionString = "Dsn=EXCEL";
- OdbcCommand oComm = new OdbcCommand();
- oComm.Connection = oConn;
- oComm.CommandText = "Select * From [Feuil1$A1:C3]";
- try {
- DataSet ds = new DataSet();
- OdbcDataAdapter oAdapter = new OdbcDataAdapter(oComm);
- oConn.Open();
- oAdapter.Fill(ds);
- dataGridView1.DataSource = ds;
- dataGridView1.DataMember = ds.Tables[0].TableName;
- label1.Text = "Connection established successfully!!!";
- } catch (IOException caught) { MessageBox.Show(caught.Message); } catch (OdbcException caught) { MessageBox.Show(caught.Message); } finally {
- oConn.Close();
- }
- }
But don't forget to include the System.Data.Odbc namespace into your project.
- Now, run the application and observe.
Figure 6
Good dotneting!!!