Opening .dat (tab delimited file) in Excel, save as .xls

Question

I am trying to open a .dat file in Excel, which is tab delimited, and then have it save out as a .xls file.

So far, I can read in the file and save it as the .xls fi

Answer 1

This sould work:

using Excel = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel;
using Microsoft.Office;
using Microsoft.Office.Core;

        Excel.Application xlApp;
        Excel.Workbook xlWorkBook;
        Excel.Worksheet xlWorkSheet;
        object misValue = System.Reflection.Missing.Value;
        xlApp = new Excel.Application();
        xlApp.Workbooks.OpenText(@"c:\data.txt", Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.XlTextParsingType.xlDelimited);
        xlApp.Visible = true;

Answer 2

The fix for this question:

xlWorkBook = xlApp.Workbooks.Open(f, 0, true, 5, "", "", true, Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.XlPlatform.xlWindows, "\t", false, false, 0, true, 1, 0); xlWorkBook.SaveAs(filename + ".xls", Excel.XlFileFormat.xlWorkbookNormal, misValue, misValue, misValue, misValue, Excel.XlSaveAsAccessMode.xlExclusive, misValue, misValue, misValue, misValue, misValue);

In the xlApp.Worksbooks.Open() method, the fourth arg is "Format" which if you use the value '1', it will assume that the file is tab delimited and open it accordingly.

Answer 3

I don't use C#, but I'm thinking you might need to use something like Workbooks.OpenText method detailed here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb223513%28v=office.12%29.aspx

It allows you to specify delimiters, etc.

Something like this:

xlWorkBook = xlApp.Workbooks.OpenText (filename:="DATA.TXT", dataType:=xlDelimited, tab:=True);

That's from the Excel 2007 Developer reference, but maybe there's a similar method in C#? Just a guess.

Answer 4

How about using FileHelpers ?

I have used this approach a lot, and find it a super nice library.

It handles delimited and fixed length files, and you can write back to Excel using the ExcelStorage class.