How to: Get Worksheet Information from an Open XML Package

Applies to: Excel 2010 | Office 2010 | PowerPoint 2010 | Word 2010

In this article
Create SpreadsheetDocument Object
Basic Structure of a SpreadsheetML
How the Sample Code Works
Sample Code

This topic shows how to use the classes in the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office to programmatically retrieve information from a worksheet in a Spreadsheet document.

The following assembly directives are required to compile the code in this topic.

using System;
using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Packaging;
using S = DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Spreadsheet.Sheets;
using E = DocumentFormat.OpenXml.OpenXmlElement;
using A = DocumentFormat.OpenXml.OpenXmlAttribute;

Imports System
Imports DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Packaging
Imports S = DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Spreadsheet.Sheets
Imports E = DocumentFormat.OpenXml.OpenXmlElement
Imports A = DocumentFormat.OpenXml.OpenXmlAttribute

Create SpreadsheetDocument Object

In the Open XML SDK, the SpreadsheetDocument class represents an Excel document package. To create an Excel document, you create an instance of the SpreadsheetDocument class and populate it with parts. At a minimum, the document must have a workbook part that serves as a container for the document, and at least one worksheet part. The text is represented in the package as XML using SpreadsheetML markup.

To create the class instance from the document you call one of the Open() methods. In this example, you must open the file for read access only. Therefore, you can use the Open(String, Boolean) method, and set the Boolean parameter to false.

The following code example calls the Open method to open the file specified by the filepath for read-only access.

// Open file as read-only.
using (SpreadsheetDocument mySpreadsheet = SpreadsheetDocument.Open(fileName, false))

' Open file as read-only.
Using mySpreadsheet As SpreadsheetDocument = SpreadsheetDocument.Open(fileName, False)

The using statement provides a recommended alternative to the typical .Open, .Save, .Close sequence. It ensures that the Dispose method (internal method used by the Open XML SDK to clean up resources) is automatically called when the closing brace is reached. The block that follows the using statement establishes a scope for the object that is created or named in the using statement, in this case mySpreadsheet.

Basic Structure of a SpreadsheetML

The basic document structure of a SpreadsheetML document consists of the Sheets and Sheet elements, which reference the worksheets in the Workbook. A separate XML file is created for each Worksheet. For example, the SpreadsheetML for a workbook that has two worksheets name MySheet1 and MySheet2 is located in the Workbook.xml file and is shown in the following code example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?> 
<workbook xmlns=https://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2006/main xmlns:r="https://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships">
    <sheets>
        <sheet name="MySheet1" sheetId="1" r:id="rId1" /> 
        <sheet name="MySheet2" sheetId="2" r:id="rId2" /> 
    </sheets>
</workbook>

The worksheet XML files contain one or more block level elements such as SheetData. sheetData represents the cell table and contains one or more Row elements. A row contains one or more Cell elements. Each cell contains a CellValue element that represents the value of the cell. For example, the SpreadsheetML for the first worksheet in a workbook, that only has the value 100 in cell A1, is located in the Sheet1.xml file and is shown in the following code example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> 
<worksheet xmlns="https://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2006/main">
    <sheetData>
        <row r="1">
            <c r="A1">
                <v>100</v> 
            </c>
        </row>
    </sheetData>
</worksheet>

Using the Open XML SDK 2.0, you can create document structure and content that uses strongly-typed classes that correspond to SpreadsheetML elements. You can find these classes in the DocumentFormat.OpenXML.Spreadsheet namespace. The following table lists the class names of the classes that correspond to the workbook, sheets, sheet, worksheet, and sheetData elements.

How the Sample Code Works

After you have opened the file for read-only access, you instantiate the Sheets class.

S sheets = mySpreadsheet.WorkbookPart.Workbook.Sheets;

Dim sheets As S = mySpreadsheet.WorkbookPart.Workbook.Sheets

You then you iterate through the Sheets collection and display OpenXmlElement and the OpenXmlAttribute in each element.

foreach (E sheet in sheets)
{
    foreach (A attr in sheet.GetAttributes())
    {
        Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", attr.LocalName, attr.Value);
    }
}

For Each sheet In sheets
    For Each attr In sheet.GetAttributes()
        Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", attr.LocalName, attr.Value)
    Next
Next

By displaying the attribute information you get the name and ID for each worksheet in the spreadsheet file.

Sample Code

In the following code example, you retrieve and display the attributes of the all sheets in the specified workbook contained in a SpreadsheetDocument document. The following code example shows how to call the GetSheetInfo method.

GetSheetInfo(@"C:\Users\Public\Documents\Sheet5.xlsx");

GetSheetInfo("C:\Users\Public\Documents\Sheet5.xlsx")

The following is the complete code sample in both C# and Visual Basic.

public static void GetSheetInfo(string fileName)
{
    // Open file as read-only.
    using (SpreadsheetDocument mySpreadsheet = SpreadsheetDocument.Open(fileName, false))
    {
        S sheets = mySpreadsheet.WorkbookPart.Workbook.Sheets;

        // For each sheet, display the sheet information.
        foreach (E sheet in sheets)
        {
            foreach (A attr in sheet.GetAttributes())
            {
                Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", attr.LocalName, attr.Value);
            }
        }
    }
}

Public Sub GetSheetInfo(ByVal fileName As String)
        ' Open file as read-only.
        Using mySpreadsheet As SpreadsheetDocument = SpreadsheetDocument.Open(fileName, False)
            Dim sheets As S = mySpreadsheet.WorkbookPart.Workbook.Sheets

            ' For each sheet, display the sheet information.
            For Each sheet As E In sheets
                For Each attr As A In sheet.GetAttributes()
                    Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", attr.LocalName, attr.Value)
                Next
            Next
        End Using
    End Sub

See Also

Reference

Class Library Reference