Reading Excel in C#

Question

I have code in C# like this.

xlWorkBook = xlApp.Workbooks.Open("data.xls", 0, true, 5, "", "", true, Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.XlPlatform.xlWindows, "\t", false, false, 0, true, 1, 0);

I have data.xls file where .exe are located.

When I compile and then run .exe, I'm receiving error that data.xls could not be found.

What I do wrong?

Answer 1

It depends on how exactly you run your application. What makes you think that application is being ran in the same directory where executable file is located? Most probably you just forgot to set the working directory right. How to do it? See this Q&A.

Answer 2

Unless you've changed your project settings, when your C# app gets built, it is being built in a bin/debug (or bin/release) folder under your project. When you run from the IDE, that's the current working directory for your app.

Try using an absolute path, or moving the data.xls file into your application's bin/debug folder.

When you specify the absolute path, make sure to prefix the string with an @ sign to escape out the slashes. string path = @"c:\data\excel\data.xls";

UPDATE: If you need to use a relative path, I would get the absolute path based on the relative patht this way:

FileInfo fileInfo = new FileInfo("data.xls");
String path = fileInfo.FullName;

This might be preferable to getting the full path based on the .exe location, because it will work even if the CWD is not the same as the .exe location.

Answer 3

i think this is a problem with the location of the Excel file. the application's working directory is not where the .exe file is located, but probably in the bin/debug folder.

Answer 4

If your xls will always be in the same location as your .exe, you can use this to get a path that won't be hardcoded to the build directory:

string directory = Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
string path = Path.Combine(directory, "data.xls");

Answer 5

By default, Excel assumes that the folder of the file specified is user's "My Documents" directory. If the file is not there, any attempt to open it will fail.

By specifying an absolute path to the file, you can ensure that correct file is being picked up. Make sure the file exists.

Eg-

//file is in D:\TestFolder, and its called abc.xlsx
xlApp.Workbooks.Open( @"D:\TestFolder\abc.xlsx", ....

Hope it helps.

Other answers show you how to use the absolute path to the file which is kept at certain location.