c# - Convert Excel Range to ADO.NET DataSet or DataTable, etc

Question

I have an Excel spreadsheet that will sit out on a network share drive. It needs to be accessed by my Winforms C# 3.0 application (many users could be using the app and hitting this spreadsheet at the same time). There is a lot of data on one worksheet. This data is broken out into areas that I have named as ranges. I need to be able to access these ranges individually, return each range as a dataset, and then bind it to a grid.

I have found examples that use OLE and have got these to work. However, I have seen some warnings about using this method, plus at work we have been using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel as the standard thus far. I don't really want to stray from this unless I have to. Our users will be using Office 2003 on up as far as I know.

I can get the range I need with the following code:

MyDataRange = (Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Range)
    MyWorkSheet.get_Range("MyExcelRange", Type.Missing);

The OLE way was nice as it would take my first row and turn those into columns. My ranges (12 total) are for the most part different from each other in number of columns. Didn't know if this info would affect any recommendations.

Is there any way to use Interop and get the returned range back into a dataset?

Answer 1

I don't know about a built-in function, but it shouldn't be difficult to write it yourself. Pseudocode:

DataTable MakeTableFromRange(Range range)
{
   table = new DataTable
   for every column in range
   {
      add new column to table
   }
   for every row in range
   {
      add new datarow to table
      for every column in range
      {
         table.cells[column, row].value = range[column, row].value
      }
   }
   return table
}