CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.netexcel-automation
user2179771
user2179771

Reputation:

.net detect if Office.interop.Excel exists

I need to use Excel if it is installed on the target machine, or produce a text file if it is not.

I check for the presence of the excel application registry key, but before I can do that, I get a 

System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c

or one of its dependencies.

How can I detect if an interop assembly is available and prevent the run-time trying to load it if it isn't. (I don't know what version of Excel may exist on the target, so I don't think I can redistribute an interop in case its the wrong one.)

Upvotes: 1

Views: 379

Answers (1)

Panagiotis Kanavos
Panagiotis Kanavos

Reputation: 131237

It seems that you added a reference to a specific interop assembly in your code. Your application will not even load since it can't find all the assemblies it needs to run. If you absolutely have to use Excel through Interop, you will have to remove the reference and load the assembly dynamically with Assembly.Load.

You don't need Excel at all if all you want is to read/create an Excel file.

XLSX is just a bunch of zipped XML files. The OpenXML SDK by Microsoft allows you to manipulate the files withoud dealing with the XML directly and there are other libraries that sit on top of the SDK to make programming even easier.

Generating Excel 2010 Workbooks by using the Open XML SDK 2.0 offers a pretty detailed explanation of the XLSX format and how you can use the SDK to create simple and complex spreadsheets easily.

Upvotes: 2

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