Defining objects from data in an excel table - vb.net

Question

So I have data that is supplier by country where the supplier information changes by country.
600 suppliers and will be upwards of 35 countries(15 attributes per country per supplier). The excel data sheet looks similar to this:
SupplierID SupplierName USsupplierCategory USsupplierCategoryCode UKSupplierCategory ...
1 Sup1 Beverages 1 Ropes
3 Sup5 Ladders 46 Small Ladders
If I could figure out a simple way to get this excel data into an array(even copying and pasting works if the formatting goes quickly since I only have to do this once a month at the most) I can then loop through it an build the needed objects off of the array. But I can't find a simple way to build an array with the excel data without going through a lot of formatting for an array assignment.
I'm pretty new to VB.net and still an amateur programmer and I just can't seem to envision a simple solution to this.
Is an array the way to go? Should I instead loop through each row as a string and break the data by tabs and assign the data that way?
If I am too vague I apologize, let me know and I will provide more specific detail and some code if needed.

Answer 1

The high level approach I'd use is as follows:
1) Define your supplier object
2) Create a supplier object for each row of your datatable and add it to a collection, e.g. a List of supplier objects
Once you have done this, you can easily iterate through your collection of supplier objects to do whatever you like.
Detailed approach:
1) Define your supplier object:
Public Class Supplier
Public property SupplierID as integer
Public Property SupplierName as string
Public Property USsupplierCategory as string
Public property USsuppliercategorycode as integer
Public property UKSupplierCategory as string
End Class
2) Read your excel object into a datatable
This gets a bit tricker. As Tim said, it is easier to save your excel files as csv and then read them in. This is because it is easy to read in csv, but it is also complicated to read in excel files. They can be either xls or xlsx format, and deciding on which one can be a problem. We can also get into COM object issues etc.
If you are to stick with reading in excel, I recommend using Linq2Excel, as this library handles the xls / xlsx issue for you. Here is some example code I knocked up based on your example spreadsheet that returns a list of supplier objects:
Imports LinqToExcel
Imports Remotion.Data.Linq
Imports System.Data
Imports System.Linq
Public Class ReadInExcelData
Public Shared Function GetSupplierListFromSupplierExcel() As List(Of Supplier)
Dim excel As ExcelQueryFactory = New ExcelQueryFactory("C:\Users\YourUserName\Desktop\ExampleData.xls")
Dim suppliers = From c In excel.Worksheet
Select c
Dim list As New List(Of Supplier)
For Each supplier In suppliers
list.Add(New Supplier(supplier.Item(0),
supplier.Item(1),
supplier.Item(2),
supplier.Item(3),
supplier.Item(4)))
Next
Return list
End Function
End Class
You can get the linqtoexcel library here: http://code.google.com/p/linqtoexcel/