Question

What column names cannot be used when creating an Excel spreadsheet with ADO.

I have a statement that creates a page in a spreadsheet:

CREATE TABLE [TableName] (Column string, Column2 string); 

I have found that using a column name of Date or Container will generate an error when the statement is executed.

Does anyone have a complete (or partial) list of words that cannot be used as column names? This is for use in a user-driven environment and it would be better to ‘fix’ the columns than to crash.

My work-around for these is to replace any occurences of Date or Container with Date_ and Container_ respectively.

Answer 1

You can use brackets for any fieldname, e.g.:

CREATE TABLE [TableName] ([Date] string, [Container] string) 

Full example:

using (OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection('Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\\temp\\test.xls;Extended Properties='Excel 8.0;HDR=Yes'')) {   conn.Open();   OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand('CREATE TABLE [TableName] ([Date] string, [Container] string)', conn);   cmd.ExecuteNonQuery(); }