CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#
Rakesh K
Rakesh K

Reputation: 8505

Exception in opening a file that is already open

I am building an application in C# in which I have to open a CSV file to read data from it. I get an exception when I try to open the CSV file from C# when that file is already open in Excel. The exception says that the process cannot access the file since it is already open. How can I solve this problem and open the file even if it is opened in other application?

Thanks, Rakesh.

Upvotes: 8

Views: 15092

Answers (5)

David Sykes
David Sykes

Reputation: 49822

Another solution, suggested by this answer, is to copy the file to a temporary file and open that.

Use

System.IO.File.Copy(sourcepath, copypath, false);

Upvotes: 0

Hans Passant
Hans Passant

Reputation: 941317

It is possible but you have to carefully control the file sharing you specify. Most .NET classes default to FileShare.Read, denying another process from writing to the file. But that cannot work if the file is opened by Excel, it already gained write access to it. You cannot deny a right that was already acquired.

To fix the problem, make your code look similar to this:

        using (var fs = new FileStream(@"c:\\temp\\test.csv", FileMode.Open, 
                   FileAccess.Read, FileShare.ReadWrite))
        using (var sr = new StreamReader(fs)) {
            // Read it...
        }

Note the use of FileShare.ReadWrite. I verified this code works while Excel had test.csv opened.

Beware of the potential trouble you'll invite with this, odd things can happen when Excel writes to the file just as you are reading it. You'll likely read garbage, part of old data, part of new, without a good way to diagnose this.

Upvotes: 8

Nayan
Nayan

Reputation: 3214

I faced this problem some time back.

You are missing the FileShare parameter. Without specifying that, if you open a file, it will be locked exclusively by your application. But since it's already been opened by Excel (or any other app), you will receive an exception.

You can try using this - I think this will be your best bet -

using (FileStream fs = File.Open(<file-path>, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read))

This code says: Hello Excel! If you may permit (read, not throw exception), I would like to read the file, though I will not try to own it and I know that you may modify it anytime.

If this throws error, then Excel has denied you even the read access. Too bad then! All the best.

Upvotes: 9

Guffa
Guffa

Reputation: 700222

That's not possible.

A file can be opened with different kind of protection. Excel opens the file exclusively, for the purpose of protecting the file from being changed by some other program and then reverted back when Excel saves it.

Excel could have opened the file and allowed reading, but then you could end up in a deadlock situation where two applications have the file open for reading, and neither can save anything back to it.

Upvotes: 0

Woot4Moo
Woot4Moo

Reputation: 24316

Due to concurrency issues you can not have the option to write to two instances of the same file. It should be possible to open one as read-only this would allow for there to not be a concurrency issue as reading is guaranteed to be thread safe. This article should explain how to do what I proposed

Upvotes: 0

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