Question

I am iterating through some rows/cells in an Excel sheet and some of the cells are blank. When I try to do the insert, if a cell contains no data, it advises me that that particular parameter has no default value. In Access, I have set the default value to “=Null” but I still receive the error. Do I have to do an If statement as shown below for every parameter in order to prevent errors? I’d like to clean up my code if possible.

If worksheet1.GetValue(i, 14) Is Nothing Then
                            cmd.Parameters.Add("@Param1", OleDbType.Char).Value = DBNull.Value
                        Else
                            cmd.Parameters.Add("@Param1", OleDbType.Char).Value = worksheet1.GetValue(i, 14)
                        End If

Answer 1

In my experience (albeit C#), yes you do. Interop (which is what I’m assuming you’re using although I don’t recognise the GetValue() call) usually throws an exception when you try to get data from an empty cell without first checking. The way I’ve handled it is to wrap the code in a method and just call it each time (sorry, my VB is a little rusty):

Public Function GetCellContents(column As Integer, row As Integer) As String

    If worksheet1.GetValue(column, row) Is Nothing Then
        Return ""
    Else
        Return worksheet1.GetValue(column, row)
    End If

End Function

And then you can just do:

cmd.Parameters.Add("@Param1", OleDbType.Char).Value = GetCellContents(i, 14);