What is the fastest way to export dataGridView rows to Excel or into an SQL Server database

Question

What is the fastest way to export DataGridView rows in the range of 460328 - 800328 to Excel or into an SQL Server database table with out using Microsoft office interop as

Answer 1

For transferring to Excel, this is the fastest method that I've found (although it does use Office InterOp). Loop through each cell in the DataGridView and assign it to an array of objects. Then assign the entire array to an Excel Range. This is much faster than assigning a value to each Excel cell individually because it only invokes InterOp once. Pardon the VB:

Sub Export()
    Dim xlApp As New Excel.Application
    Dim wb As Excel.Workbook = xlApp.Workbooks.Add
    Dim ws As Excel.Worksheet = wb.Worksheets(1)
    Dim dgv as DataGridView = MyDataGridView

    Dim ExportArray(dgv.Rows.Count, dgv.Columns.Count - 1) As Object
    Dim j, i As Integer

    For j = 0 To dgv.Columns.Count - 1
        ExportArray(0, j) = dgv.Columns(j).Name
        For i = 1 To dgv.Rows.Count
            ExportArray(i, j) = dgv(j, i - 1).Value
        Next
    Next

    Dim col As String = ColNumtoLetter(j)
    ws.Range("A1:" & col & i).Value = ExportArray
End Sub

Private Function ColNumtoLetter(ByVal iCol As Integer) As String
    Dim Result As String = ""

    Dim iAlpha As Integer = Int(iCol / 26.001)
    Dim iRemainder As Integer = iCol - (iAlpha * 26)

    If iAlpha > 0 Then
        Result = Chr(iAlpha + 64)
    End If
    If iRemainder > 0 Then
        Result = Result & Chr(iRemainder + 64)
    End If

    Return Result
End Function

The second method just translates the final column number to the corresponding Excel column name.

See "Fast Exporting from DataSet to Excel" and "Export Data to Excel Much Faster" for more info.