reading Excel Open XML is ignoring blank cells

Question

I am using the accepted solution here to convert an excel sheet into a datatable. This works fine if I have \"perfect\" data but if I have a blank cell in the middle of my

Answer 1

I can't resist optimizing the subroutines from Amurra's answer to remove need for Regex's.

The first function isn't actually needed since the second one can will accept a cell reference (C3) or a column name (C) (but still a nice helper function). The indices are also one-based (only because our implementation used one-based for the rows to match visually with Excel).

    /// 

    /// Given a cell name, return the cell column name.
    /// 
    /// Address of the cell (ie. B2)
    /// Column Name (ie. B)
    /// cellReference
    public static string GetColumnName(string cellReference)
    {
        // Advance from L to R until a number, then return 0 through previous position
        //
        for (int lastCharPos = 0; lastCharPos <= 3; lastCharPos++)
            if (Char.IsNumber(cellReference[lastCharPos]))
                return cellReference.Substring(0, lastCharPos);

        throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("cellReference");
    }

    /// 

    /// Return one-based column index given a cell name or column name
    /// 
    /// Column Name (ie. A, AB3, or AB44)
    /// One based index if the conversion was successful; otherwise null
    public static int GetColumnIndexFromName(string columnNameOrCellReference)
    {
        int columnIndex = 0;            
        int factor = 1;
        for (int pos = columnNameOrCellReference.Length - 1; pos >= 0; pos--)   // R to L
        {
            if (Char.IsLetter(columnNameOrCellReference[pos]))  // for letters (columnName)
            {
                columnIndex += factor * ((columnNameOrCellReference[pos] - 'A') + 1);
                factor *= 26;
            }
        }
        return columnIndex;
    }