Question

I am writing some code to read an excel file, but unfortuantely the excel file contains more than 300 columns and I need to read all 300.

I’ve been using some 3rd Part libraries to do this LinqToExcel but they can only read a maximum of 256 columns

        var excel = new ExcelQueryFactory(FileName);

        var recs = (from ws in excel.Worksheet<Sample>("data export final")
                    select ws).ToList()

Does anyone know how I can read all 300 columns, preferabbly without having to install Microst Office as this will be running on a server which doesn’t have that installed

Answer 1

EPPlus can read and write > 256 columns. Here’s a short example showing writing to column 300.

FileInfo newFile = new FileInfo(@"C:\Temp\sample300.xlsx");
if (newFile.Exists)
{
    newFile.Delete();  // ensures we create a new workbook
    newFile = new FileInfo(@"C:\Temp\sample300.xlsx");
}

using (ExcelPackage package = new ExcelPackage(newFile))
{
    // add a new worksheet to the empty workbook
    ExcelWorksheet worksheet = package.Workbook.Worksheets.Add("Inventory");
    //Add the headers
    worksheet.Cells[1, 1].Value = "ID";
    worksheet.Cells[1, 300].Value = "Col 300";
    package.Save();
}

Reading from column 300+ is just as easy, but it’s harder to post a self-contained example that includes a large input file 🙂