CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#excelreferencevisual-studio-2012vsto
Moe_Al
Moe_Al

Reputation: 651

How to reference Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel dll?

I had developed a system that deals with excel sheets in 2006 using MS VS 2005. Now, I can not use the same reference with MS VS 2012.

var app = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application();
Workbooks wbs = app.Workbooks;

Upvotes: 64

Views: 410194

Answers (7)

Dan
Dan

Reputation: 333

Go to Visual Studio Installer under Individual Components and click 'Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio. This solved it for me after lots of headaches.

Go to Visual Studio Installer under Individual Components and click 'Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio'

Upvotes: 2

Grant Winney
Grant Winney

Reputation: 66449

Use NuGet (VS 2013+):

The easiest way in any recent version of Visual Studio is to just use the NuGet package manager. (Even VS2013, with the NuGet Package Manager for Visual Studio 2013 extension.)

Right-click on "References" and choose "Manage NuGet Packages...", then just search for Excel.

enter image description here

VS 2012:

Older versions of VS didn't have access to NuGet.

  • Right-click on "References" and select "Add Reference".
  • Select "Extensions" on the left.
  • Look for Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.
    (Note that you can just type "excel" into the search box in the upper-right corner.)

VS2012/2013 References

VS 2008 / 2010:

  • Right-click on "References" and select "Add Reference".
  • Select the ".NET" tab.
  • Look for Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.

VS 2010 References

Upvotes: 113

CYCLONE
CYCLONE

Reputation: 541

You can also try installing it in Visual Studio via Package Manager.

Run Install-Package Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel in the Package Console. This will automatically add it as a project reference.

Use is like this:

Using Excel=Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel;

Upvotes: 43

Daniel.Veneziano
Daniel.Veneziano

Reputation: 61

Building off of Mulfix's answer, if you have Visual Studio Community 2015, try Add Reference... -> COM -> Type Libraries -> 'Microsoft Excel 15.0 Object Library'.

Upvotes: 6

LawMan
LawMan

Reputation: 3625

Instead of early binding the reference, there's an open source project called NetOffice that abstracts this from your project, making life much easier. That way you don't have to rely on your users having a specific version of Office installed.

NetOffice Codeplex site.

Upvotes: 2

Muflix
Muflix

Reputation: 6778

If you have VS 2013 Express and you cant find Microsoft.Office namespace, try this ('Microsoft Excel 12.0 Object Library' if you want to use Office 2007)

enter image description here

Upvotes: 21

mas_oz2k1
mas_oz2k1

Reputation: 2901

You have to check which version of Excel you are targeting?

If you are targeting Excel 2010 use version 14 (as per Grant's screenshot answer), Excel 2007 use version 12 . You can not support Excel 2003 using vS2012 as they do not have the correct Interop dll installed.

Upvotes: 2

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