Question

I’m using OpenXML to open a spreadsheet and loop through the rows of a spreadsheet. I have a linq query that returns all cells within a row. The linq query was ripped straight from a demo on the MSDN.

IEnumerable<String> textValues =
    from cell in row.Descendants<Cell>()
    where cell.CellValue != null
    select (cell.DataType != null
            && cell.DataType.HasValue
            && cell.DataType == CellValues.SharedString
            ? sharedString.ChildElements[int.Parse(cell.CellValue.InnerText)].InnerText
            : cell.CellValue.InnerText);

The linq query is great at returning all cells that have a value, but it doesn’t return cells that don’t have a value. This in turn makes it impossible to tell which cell is which. Let me explain a little more. Say for instance we have three columns in our spreadsheet: Name, SSN, and Address. The way this linq query works is it only returns those cells that have a value for a given row. So if there is a row of data that has “John”, “”, “173 Sycamore” then the linq query only returns “John” and “173 Sycamore” in the enumeration, which in turn makes it impossible for me to know if “173 Sycamore” is the SSN or the Address field.

Let me reiterate here: what I need is for all cells to be returned, and not just cells that contain a value.

I’ve tried to monkey the linq query in every way that I could think of, but I had no luck whatsoever (ie – removing the where clause isn’t the trick). Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

The OpenXML standard does not define placeholders for cells that don’t have data. In other words, it’s underlying storage in XML is sparse. You could work round this on one of two ways:

1. Create a list of all “available” or “possible” cells (probably by using a CROSS JOIN type of operation) then “left” joining to the row.Descendants<Cell>() collection to see if the cell reference has a value
2. Utilize a 3rd party tool such as ClosedXML or EPPlus as a wrapper around the Excel data and query their interfaces, which are much more developer-friendly.