How to Read Excel Data in Asp.net

In this Blog, we will see how to display data from an Excel spreadsheet using ASP.NET.

In this Blog, we will see how to display data from an Excel spreadsheet using ASP.NET. We will connect to a Microsoft Excel workbook using the OLEDB.NET data provider, extract data and then display the data in a GridView.

Let us get started.

Step 1: Open Visual Studio > File > New >Website > Under Templates, click ASP.NET WebSite and choose either Visual C# or Visual Basic as the language. Select a location and click Ok.

Step 2: We will create two excel sheets and add them to the project. One excel sheet will be created in Office 2003(.xls) and the other one using Office 2007(.xlsx). Add 4 columns called EID, EName, Age and City to the ‘Sheet1'. Also add some data into the columns. Once these excel files are created, add them to your project. To add them to the project, right click project > Add Existing Item > Add the two excel files.

Step 3: We will now create a web.config file to store the connection string information. Right click project > Add New Item > Web.config. Add the following entries to the file

      <connectionStrings>
            <add name="xls" connectionString="Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=Sample1.xls;Extended Properties=Excel 8.0"/>
            <add name="xlsx" connectionString="Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=Sample.xlsx;Extended Properties=Excel 12.0"/>
      </connectionStrings>

As you can observe, the connection string for xlsx (Excel 2007) contains Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0 as the provider. This is the new Access database engine OLE DB driver and is also capable of reading Excel 2003.

Step 4: Add a GridView to the Default.aspx page. We will extract data from the excel file and bind it to the GridView.

Step 5: Let us now create a connection to the excel file and extract data from it. Before that add a reference to System.Data.OleDb namespcae;

Code following

{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        OleDbConnection cn = new OleDbConnection("Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;"+"Data Source="+Server.MapPath("sample.xlsx")+";"+"Extended Properties=Excel 12.0;");

        cn.Open();
OleDbDataAdapter da = new OleDbDataAdapter("select * from [Sheet1$]", cn);
DataSet ds = new DataSet();
            da.Fill(ds);

            GridView1.DataSource = ds.Tables[0].DefaultView;
            GridView1.DataBind();

}