How do I open a file that is opened in another application

Question

I have an winforms application that loads in excel files for analysis. Currently, in order to open the excel file the file must not be already open in excel otherwise a FileIOException is thrown when I try and load in the file.

What I would like to do is allow my application to read in the file even if it is open in excel rather than forcing the user to close down the worksheet first. Note that the application in question only needs to read the file, not write to it.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

You could try passing FileShare.ReadWrite when opening the file:

using (var stream = new FileStream(        @"d:\myfile.xls",         FileMode.Open,         FileAccess.Read,         FileShare.ReadWrite)) {  }