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)