Importing Excel sheet into SQL Server with C#

Question

I am working on writing a simple program to import an excel sheet into my database but I am running into an error of:

Could not find installable ISAM

I am not sure what this means and after hours of searching with so many different topics I have turned to SO. There is a lot of talk of Jet and ACE where I am not sure what the difference is but here is the rundown: I have an excel file called test or test1 and I just want to import the first sheet in the file. here is my source code so far:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Data.OleDb;
using System.Data.Common;
using System.Data.SqlClient;

namespace WindowsFormsApplication2
{

    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        string filePath = null;
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        //Method to check database connection
        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            string connetionString = null;
            SqlConnection cnn;
            connetionString = "Data Source=Zach-PC;Initial Catalog=master;Integrated Security=SSPI;";
            cnn = new SqlConnection(connetionString);
            try
            {
                cnn.Open();
                MessageBox.Show("Connection Open ! ");
                cnn.Close();
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("Can not open connection ! ");
            }
        }

        //Method to select a file
        private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            string excelConnectionString = @"Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=C:/Users/Zach/Documents/test1.xls;Extended Properties=Excel 12.0,HDR=Yes;IMEX=1";


            // Create Connection to Excel Workbook
            using (OleDbConnection connection =
                         new OleDbConnection(excelConnectionString))
            {
                OleDbCommand command = new OleDbCommand
                        ("Select * FROM [Sheet1$]", connection);

                connection.Open(); //HERE IS WHERE THE ERROR IS

                // Create DbDataReader to Data Worksheet
                using (DbDataReader dr = command.ExecuteReader())
                {
                    // SQL Server Connection String
                    string sqlConnectionString = "Data Source=Zach-PC;Initial Catalog=master;Integrated Security=True";

                    // Bulk Copy to SQL Server
                    using (SqlBulkCopy bulkCopy =
                               new SqlBulkCopy(sqlConnectionString))
                    {
                        bulkCopy.DestinationTableName = "Table";
                        bulkCopy.WriteToServer(dr);
                        MessageBox.Show("Data Exoprted To Sql Server Succefully");
                    }
                }

            }
        }
    }
}

Am I approaching this in the right manor?

Answer 1

You need to wrap Extended Properties part of the connection string in the quotation marks:

//                                                                                                                                 here                     and here
//  -->                                                                                                                              v                          v
string excelConnectionString = @"Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=C:/Users/Zach/Documents/test1.xls;Extended Properties=""Excel 12.0,HDR=Yes;IMEX=1""";

Answer 2

The Office oledb driver is probably not installed on your computer. You should download it from microsoft website . After the installation, your code should run.

Answer 3

If you are reading office 2007 (or newer) excel files then I will suggest to use Open source library Epplus to read the excel file.It is purely .NET library and you wont be dependent on oledb driver.

epplus

EPPlus is a .net library that reads and writes Excel 2007/2010 files using the Open Office Xml format (xlsx).

you can easily read an excel file into datatable using this library. have a look at this thread

How convert stream excel file to datatable C#?