OleDB & mixed Excel datatypes : missing data

Question

I have an Excel worksheet I want to read into a datatable - all is well except for one particular column in my Excel sheet. The column, \'ProductID\', is a mix of values lik

Answer 1

Several forums I found claim that by adding IMEX=1;TypeGuessRows=0;ImportMixedTypes=Text to the Extended Properties in the connection string would fix the problem, but this was not the case. I finally solved this problem by adding "HDR=NO" to the Extended Properties in the connection string (as Brian Wells shows above) so that I could import mixed types.

I then added some generic code to name the columns after the first row of data, then remove the first row.

    public static DataTable ImportMyDataTableFromExcel(string filePath)
    {
        DataTable dt = new DataTable();

        string fullPath = Path.GetFullPath(filePath);

        string connString =
           "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;" +
           "Data Source=\"" + fullPath + "\";" +
           "Extended Properties=\"Excel 8.0;HDR=No;IMEX=1;\"";

        string sql = @"SELECT * FROM [sheet1$]";

        using (OleDbDataAdapter dataAdapter = new OleDbDataAdapter(sql, connString))
        {
            dataAdapter.Fill(dt);
        }

        dt = BuildHeadersFromFirstRowThenRemoveFirstRow(dt);

        return dt;
    }

    private static DataTable BuildHeadersFromFirstRowThenRemoveFirstRow(DataTable dt)
    {
        DataRow firstRow = dt.Rows[0];

        for (int i = 0; i < dt.Columns.Count; i++)
        {
            if(!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(firstRow[i].ToString())) // handle empty cell
              dt.Columns[i].ColumnName = firstRow[i].ToString().Trim();
        }

        dt.Rows.RemoveAt(0);

        return dt;
    }