Dataset to Excel - VB.NET - vb.net

I guess this question is already out in the internet a lot. I have gone through many of them but still stuck with this problem
My requirement is to get one of the Dataset Tables to a Excel file. I have all the data I need in a Dataset.Table object. Lot of the code on the internet talks about looping through the columns and rows and assigning it to the cell in Excel file. I am able to do that but that really doesnt solve the purpose as large datasets wiht a few thousand rows takes more than 5 minutes to execute and get an output.
Is there any other efficient way to do it? Any input is appreciated as every bit of information is useful to me.
Thank you

EPPlus is free, very fast and very powerful Excel tool for visual studio using the and can do everything you want - They have the functionality to output a datatable directly to Excel using the LoadFromDataTable() function.

You could create a CSV file, and then open it with excel and convert within excel.

If I am understanding correctly you want to do an excel file from a "dataset". You can try using CSV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values); the format for CSV is really simple. For performance, store as much as data in the memory and finally write to a file, otherwise if you are writing to a file everytime you are reading a row from a dataset, then it will take much longer. Make sure your file ends with the extension of .csv otherwise MS excel will not open it. Hopefully this helps a bit.

Use GemBox Spreadsheet library (http://gemboxsoftware.com/). It does what you need.
They also have a free version.

Related

EPPLus - Opening Just The First 1000 Rows Of An Excel File From C#

Some of the Excel files I'm working with are big, and I only need to see a sampling of the data in them. The first 1000 lines is plenty.
Does anyone know of a way to open just the top of a file? Currently we're doing the following:
_package = new ExcelPackage(file);
This reads the whole file into memory. I've played with OpenXML a little bit and it looks like it's possible to read just part of a file with that, but we have a lot of code already built around EPPlus, so I'm trying to do it with EPPlus.
I believe EPPLus uses OpenXML. If anyone knows how to use the two together to read partial files and could give me some guidance, it would be greatly appreciated.

Select three rows of text in PDF using VBA

I am trying to use VBA to select three rows of data in a PDF file and copy them to the clipboard. I have tried third party libraries but I still can't seem to find a simple solution. I can use the cursor to select the data and copy it, so I just want to automate this step with VBA.
I have looked high and low for an answer to this and I feel like it might be really simple and I'm just missing it. I assume I could just use the "highliteList" method in the acrobat library to select the rows, but I don't know how to specify where to begin the selection. There is a header on each page, so I just want to say something like:
For Each header In pdf.pages
NextLine.SelectRow
NextLine.SelectRow
Next header
Selection.CopyToClipboard
Is this possible? I know those methods probly don't exist, I was using it as an example. Does anyone have experience with doing this? Thanks in advance for any help
I found a solution for all those interested. I used Bytescout PDF extractor library to convert the file to .xls format. Then I just parsed out what I needed in Excel since Excel is easy to work with via vb.net.

Automated Excel document creation using VBA

The managing director at our company wants me to produce an automated monthly document that saves to a certain place on our system so that he doesn't have to manually input all of the data. I have set up so that the document can save to the correct place in the correct format but my knowledge of VBA is not great.
Tackling this from a 1 question at a time point of view I suppose my question would be is it possible to create 1 very long macro that will accomplish many different tasks over several workbooks. For example we have a report that comes from our ERP (Baan) and shoves all of the data into one cell. Is it possible to create a macro that will accomplish formatting text to columns, then copy data from a cell based on a row reference and then take said data and paste it in to a different workbook? Would it then be able to save the workbook all from just running one macro and if so how long will all of that take once the macro is executed?
Yes I believe this should be do-able, keeping in mind that the file names + location remain the same (otherwise you'll have to edit each month). Create different Subs/Functions and call them in one main macro.
The easiest way is probably to do it step by step. Record macro's and see whether that already helps you out and if not use google & stackoverflow for help! :)
it is entirely possible - but in my Opinion VBA is not well suited to the task. The editor is atrocius at best and it is easy to produce highly specific "spaghetti code".
File operatione are possible, but are not nice. Error handling is 80s style with lots of goto.
So if you want to build something maintainable, build an external Application using Interop or epplus (.net package for reading /writing to excel documents) or an .net addin for office.

Manipulate Excel workbooks programmatically

I have an Excel workbook that I want to use as a template. It has several worksheets setup, one that produces the pretty graphs and summarizes the numbers. Sheet 1 needs to be populated with data that is generated by another program. The data comes in a tab delimited file.
Currently the user imports the tab delimited file into a new Workbook, selects all and copies. Then goes to the template and pastes the data into sheet1.
This is a large amount of data, 269 columns and over 135,000 rows. It’s a cumbersome process and the users are not experienced Excel users. All they really want is the pretty graphs.
I would like to add a step after the program that generates the data to programmatically automate the process the user currently must do manually.
Can anyone suggest the best method/programming language that could accomplish this?
POI is the answer. Look at the Apache website. You can use java to read the data and place it in cells. The examples are very easy.
You can can solve this, for example, by a simple VBA macro. Just use the macro recorder to record the steps the user does manually now, this will give you something to start with (you probably will have to add a function to let the user choose the import file).
You said you have some data generated by another program. What kind of program? A program that you have developed by yourself and where you can add the excel-import functionality? Or a third party program with a GUI that cannot be automated easily?
And if you really want to create an external program for this task - choose whatever programming lanuguage you like as long as it can use COM objects. In .NET, you have the option of using VSTO, but I would only suggest that for this task if you have already some experience with that (but than you would not ask this kind of question, I think :-))
Look here:
Create Excel (.XLS and .XLSX) file from C#
There's NPOI (.NET Framework version of POI) so that you can code in C# if you want.
If you use two workbooks - one for data and one for graphs - and don't update links automatically you can use a macro to get the data (maybe an ODBC connection if the file is in a format it can read - long shot) and then link the charts to the data workbook.
Use a macro to update the links and generate the charts and then send them out and hope no one updates the links.

Importing from excel "applications" using SSIS

I am looking for any tips or resources on importing from excel into a SQL database, but specifically when the information is NOT in column and row format.
I am currently doing some pre-development work for a project, and in most ways I would like to use SSIS for the project. The one area that my research and googling is leaving a big question mark over is the import of the excel sheet.
In short our users are using excel as a simple calculator / application. Values are entered into specific cells in the sheet and then in other cells formulas come up with the final answers. The sheet has been "beautified" to make it easier for users to use (i.e. white space, merged cells, pretty colours, etc). I need a mechanism to get both the raw values and the final answers and import them into a SQL database.
There is a ton of information on the trials and tribulations of importing column and row info into Excel, but have any fellow stack-overflowers had experience with this? Is SSIS appropriate for this (the other viable option would have to be integration into a .NET service).
Thanks!
What about adding a sheet to the workbook that pulls the answers from the calculation sheet and shows them in a tabular format, and then use the magic of SSIS to suck in the values from that new sheet?
If you can't modify the worksheet, you might want to look into Interop services or something where you can specify the exact cells you want to pull data from.
I'd try the first route if possible, though another option might be to simply recreate their Excel calculator as a .NET app...
A SSIS Excel data source uses worksheet or range -- think table with column names. You could also consider using VBA from within Excel to push data into your DB.
SpreadsheetGear for .NET will let you load an Excel workbook, put values in cells, calculate, get results as raw values or formatted text and more. This might be your best option if the data is not suitable for SSIS - but it will require that you use .NET (C#, VB or any .NET language) to automate your process. The advantage of SpreadsheetGear is that you then have a solution which does not depend on anything other than .NET (of course it depends on SpreadsheetGear, but SpreadsheetGear can be deployed royalty free with your application using xcopy deployment or any other deployment method).
You can see live samples here and download the free trial here.
Disclaimer: I own SpreadsheetGear LLC