Office Viewer Component

Only install MS Office in the computer.

This article describes how to automate Microsoft Excel 97, Microsoft Excel 2000, Microsoft Excel 2002, or Microsoft Excel 2003 by using the Edraw Office Viewer Component. Specifically, this article illustrates how to get the worksheet dispatch interface.

1. Open Visual Studio .NET

2.  Right-click on the toolbox and select “Choose Items…”

3. Select the COM Components Tab

4. Check Edraw Office Viewer Component and click OK Button

5.  The control should appear in the toolbox as “Edraw Office Viewer Component”

6.  Double-click on the control to add to your form

7.  Resize and move the control on the form as desired

8.  Add a button to the form

9.  Double-click on the button to access code editor and enter the following code within the Click event:

‘Note: Modify code to point to an existing office document file on your web server

EdrawOfficeViewer1.Open “http://www.ocxt.com/demo/sample.xls”

10. Change the anchor property of EdrawOfficeViewer1 to Top, Bottom, Left, Right

11. Run the application and click on the button. The Excel program should appear!

For this automation process we need to follow the below steps

1. Add a referrence to the Microsoft Excel object library COM component.

2. Add the namespace Excel

3. Instantiate the class Excel.ApplicationClass as below
Excel.Application xl=EdrawOfficeViewer1.Application

4. To read cell(s) in the worksheet,

Excel.Sheets xlsheets = wb.Sheets; //Get the sheets from workbook
Excel.Worksheet excelWorksheet = (Excel.Worksheet)xlsheets[1]; //Select the first sheet
Excel.Range excelCell = (Excel.Range)excelWorksheet.get_Range(“B4:FZ4″, Type.Missing); //Select a range of cells
Excel.Range excelCell2 = (Excel.Range)excelWorksheet.get_Range(“A5:A5″, Type.Missing); //Select a single cell
Console.WriteLine(excelCell2.Cells.Value2.ToString()); //Print the value of the cell for a single cell selection
System.Array myvalues = (System.Array)excelCell.Cells.Value2; //Assign it to an array
string[] strArray = ConvertToStringArray(myvalues); //Convert array into String array
foreach (string str in strArray)
Console.WriteLine(” Text in Cell ” + str); //Loop through the array to print the values in the cell

Conclusion

Excel is a great tool to work with. When it comes to automating, we need to consider many things. Always remember to quit the excel application in code before exiting. If not, the memory consumed by the excel application will not be freed up.

Productivity is the biggest challenge for any company or small business. Increasing productivity is Microsoft Office’s goal. In that spirit, Microsoft has sought to include features that allow corporate and small business developers to produce quality in-house applications that harness the power and versatility of Office in order to quickly build customized solutions. Automation is the key to this strategy.

Automation (formerly known as OLE Automation) is the programmatic manipulation of any program or component based on certain rules following the Component Object Model (COM). Automation was first pioneered and developed by Visual Basic and Office as a way to allow developers to extend and control the Office environment both internally and externally.

While it is not necessary to know all the details about how Automation works, you should familiarize yourself with some of the key terms and concepts. Namely, an Automation client is any piece of code that creates and calls an instance of a COM server that exposes an “object model.” Object models are an arrangement of classes that expose functionality through various properties and methods and enable programmers to control a product. A particular instance of one of these classes is an object and the properties and methods comprise its interface. The object model for each Office application is different, and must be learned before Automation code can be written.

The Edraw Office Viewer Component provides some simple automation functions. You can call them directly. Or you can get the dispatch interface then do the automation by yourself. The component exposes the Application and ActiveDocument interfaces.