Question

Here’s the setup:

I have an excel spreadsheet that has a very simple page. It looks like so:

I use the following connection string to access this file:

string.Format("Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source={0};Extended Properties=\"Excel 8.0;HDR=NO\";", fn)

My function to access the file looks like:

try
{
    string select = string.Format("SELECT * FROM [{0}$]", tab.PageName);
    OleDbDataAdapter adapter = new OleDbDataAdapter(select, con);
    DataSet ds = new DataSet();

    adapter.Fill(ds, tab.PageName);


    // DEBUG: Let's just see what it is getting...
    for (int x = 0; x < 13; x++)
    {
        for (int y = 0; y < 3; y++)
        {
            Console.Write(ds.Tables[0].Rows[x][y].ToString() + "\t");
        }
        Console.WriteLine("");
    }
} 
catch
{ ... }

QUESTION

Why would the code NOT read some cells? Note that there is the text “Profit” at C5. I can read B5 just fine as “Revenue”. I can read C6 just fine as an integer value. But Profit seems to vanish.

This isn’t such a big problem with the header information, but entire blocks of real data refuse to be read. Instead it returns DBNull, even when the cell contains real, valid, usable data. The cells are all formatted exactly the same between cells that can read and cells that return DBNull.

I’m truly stumped!!!

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

 new OleDbConnection("...TypeGuessRows=0;ImportMixedTypes=Text");

I have a hunch you may be experiencing a problem that I had previously.

Try adding those parameters to your connection string.