VS 2008. I need to read an Excel Spreadsheet, search through the rows and columns, pick out data and write it to a SQL DB. I know how to do the SQL part, but do NOT know how to do the Excel part. I don't even know if this is the right forum. I have read a lot but most of it is either out of date (2003 or 2005) and most of it concerns writing add-ins for Excel. I will be running this on a machine(s) that do not even have office on them.

I've found lots of "detail" but cannot find the overview that explains in general terms how to proceed.

Carl

Thank you Paul for your friendly help and support!

Hi Carl,

Besides, here are more tutorials and code samples for you to check.

Topic: How to read/writeExcel documentvia Excel Automation in VB.NET?

Firstly Add Reference to COM component “Microsoft Excel Object Library�into your project.

Code sample: Get/Set cell value in Excel Spreadsheet.

Imports Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel Public Class Form1 Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click Dim oExcel As Object = CreateObject("Excel.Application") Dim oBook As Object = oExcel.Workbooks.Open("C:\Book1.xls") Dim oSheet As Object = oBook.Worksheets(1) 'e.g. Read value in A2 cell Dim cellValue As String = oSheet.Range("A2").Value 'e.g. Change value in A2 cell oSheet.Range("A2").Value = "" 'Save this Excel document oBook.SaveAs("C:\Book1.xls", True) oExcel.Quit() End Sub End Class

Many code samples about: How to manipulate Excel Spreadsheet data in VB.NET.

1) Store each Array element to Excel in consecutive cells

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/vbgeneral/thread/1a41f104-73ff-4de4-9002-687b5243ba94/

2) Sum those consecutive cells horizontally or vertically

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/vbgeneral/thread/6cbe0a15-4e21-4bd1-aad9-ea364443d3f4/

3) Retrieve all WorkSheet names in Excel file and binding specific WorkSheet content to DataGridView

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/vbgeneral/thread/ce4bbe9c-7d13-44c5-a26c-4b84912a51f3/

4) Retrieve a range of cells and bind to DataGridView

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/vbgeneral/thread/91f1f3a7-05e6-4b75-934f-b49e6f0f4f54/

Best regards,
Martin Xie