How to use Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel on a machine without installed MS Office?

Question

I'm writing an application which works with excel files. I need a feature to delete a sheet. I have to use an assembly Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.dll.

It's running fine on developer machine but when I try to deploy it on server I'm getting an error:

Could not load file or assembly 'office, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c' or one of its dependencies

I understand that problem occurs when MS Office is not installed on a machine. Customer don't want to install and buy MS Office on a server not at any price.

I install "Redistributable Primary Interop Assemblies" on developer machine as advised here: http://forums.asp.net/t/1530230.aspx/1 and compile my project again.

Code sample:

public bool DeleteSheet(string tableName) {     Excel.Application app = null;     Excel.Workbooks wbks = null;     Excel._Workbook _wbk = null;     Excel.Sheets shs = null;      bool found = false;      try     {         app = new Excel.Application();         app.Visible = false;         app.DisplayAlerts = false;         app.AlertBeforeOverwriting = false;          wbks = app.Workbooks;         _wbk = wbks.Add(xlsfile);         shs = _wbk.Sheets;         int nSheets = shs.Count;          for (int i = 1; i <= nSheets; i++)         {             Excel._Worksheet _iSheet = (Excel._Worksheet)shs.get_Item(i);             if (_iSheet.Name == tableName)             {                 _iSheet.Delete();                 found = true;                  Marshal.ReleaseComObject(_iSheet);                 break;             }             Marshal.ReleaseComObject(_iSheet);         }          if (!found)             throw new Exception(string.Format("Table \"{0}\" was't found", tableName));          _wbk.SaveAs(connect, _wbk.FileFormat, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value,         Missing.Value, Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.XlSaveAsAccessMode.xlNoChange,         Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value);     }     finally     {         _wbk.Close(null, null, null);         wbks.Close();         app.Quit();          Marshal.ReleaseComObject(shs);         Marshal.ReleaseComObject(_wbk);         Marshal.ReleaseComObject(wbks);         Marshal.ReleaseComObject(app);     }     return true; } 

An exception

Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {00024500-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} failed due to the following error: 80040154 Class not registered (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040154 (REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG)).

occurs on the line

app = new Excel.Application(); 

Can anyone advise on how to get this feature working successfully?

Answer 1

You can't use Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel without having ms office installed.

Just search in google for some libraries, which allows to modify xls or xlsx:

• http://code.google.com/p/excellibrary/
• http://simpleooxml.codeplex.com/ (only xlsx)