How to use Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel on a machine without installed MS Office?

I'm writing an application which works with excel files. I need a feature to delete a sheet. I have to use an assembly Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.dll.

It's running fine on developer machine but when I try to deploy it on server I'm getting an error:

Could not load file or assembly 'office, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c' or one of its dependencies

I understand that problem occurs when MS Office is not installed on a machine. Customer don't want to install and buy MS Office on a server not at any price.

I install "Redistributable Primary Interop Assemblies" on developer machine as advised here: http://forums.asp.net/t/1530230.aspx/1 and compile my project again.

Code sample:

public bool DeleteSheet(string tableName)
{
    Excel.Application app = null;
    Excel.Workbooks wbks = null;
    Excel._Workbook _wbk = null;
    Excel.Sheets shs = null;

    bool found = false;

    try
    {
        app = new Excel.Application();
        app.Visible = false;
        app.DisplayAlerts = false;
        app.AlertBeforeOverwriting = false;

        wbks = app.Workbooks;
        _wbk = wbks.Add(xlsfile);
        shs = _wbk.Sheets;
        int nSheets = shs.Count;

        for (int i = 1; i <= nSheets; i++)
        {
            Excel._Worksheet _iSheet = (Excel._Worksheet)shs.get_Item(i);
            if (_iSheet.Name == tableName)
            {
                _iSheet.Delete();
                found = true;

                Marshal.ReleaseComObject(_iSheet);
                break;
            }
            Marshal.ReleaseComObject(_iSheet);
        }

        if (!found)
            throw new Exception(string.Format("Table \"{0}\" was't found", tableName));

        _wbk.SaveAs(connect, _wbk.FileFormat, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value,
        Missing.Value, Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.XlSaveAsAccessMode.xlNoChange,
        Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value);
    }
    finally
    {
        _wbk.Close(null, null, null);
        wbks.Close();
        app.Quit();

        Marshal.ReleaseComObject(shs);
        Marshal.ReleaseComObject(_wbk);
        Marshal.ReleaseComObject(wbks);
        Marshal.ReleaseComObject(app);
    }
    return true;
}

An exception

Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {00024500-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} failed due to the following error: 80040154 Class not registered (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040154 (REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG)).

occurs on the line

app = new Excel.Application();

Can anyone advise on how to get this feature working successfully?

Solution 1:

You can't use Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel without having ms office installed.

Just search in google for some libraries, which allows to modify xls or xlsx:

• http://code.google.com/p/excellibrary/
• http://simpleooxml.codeplex.com/ (only xlsx)

Solution 2:

If the "Customer don't want to install and buy MS Office on a server not at any price", then you cannot use Excel ... But I cannot get the trick: it's all about one basic Office licence which costs something like 150 USD ... And I guess that spending time finding an alternative will cost by far more than this amount!

Solution 3:

you can create a service and generate excel on server and then allow clients download excel. cos buying excel license for 1000 ppl, it is better to have one license for server.

hope that helps.