DataReader does not see data in Excel cell if previous cell in the column are empty

Question

I have a weird problem with reading .xls file using OleDbDataReader.

Basically, it does not see a data in the cell, if the previous cells in the column are empty.

If I move the row with the data at the top of Excel sheet, then everything loads fine. I'm not sure, but I think that it has something to do with the amount of empty cells before the one with data.

Any help or advice will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

You probably have a connectionstring like this:

<add name="MyApp.Properties.Settings.ExcelConnectionString" connectionString="Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source={0};Extended Properties=&quot;Excel 8.0;IMEX=1;HDR=NO;TypeGuessRows=0;ImportMixedTypes=Text;&quot;;"/>

Notice the 'TypeGuessRows'. It tells Excel how many rows to scan to try to guess the datatypes of the columns. The value 0 (zero) tells it to scan all rows. Does that help you?