Opening Files with Different Formats

Developers use of Aspose.Cells to open files for different purposes. For example, open a file to retrieve data from it, or use a pre-defined designer spreadsheet file to speed up your development process. Aspose.Cells allows developers to open different kinds of source files. These source files can be Microsoft Excel reports, SpreadsheetML, Comma-separated values (CSV), Tab Delimited or Tab-separated values (TSV) files. This article discusses opening these different source files using Aspose.Cells.

If you need to know all supported file formats, please refer to the following pages: Supported File Formats

Simple Ways to Open Excel Files

Opening through Path

To open a Microsoft Excel file using the file path, pass the path of the file as a parameter while creating the instance of the Workbook class. The following sample code demonstrates opening an Excel file using the file path.

Example

Opening through Stream

Sometimes, the Excel file that you want to open is stored as a stream. In that case, similar to opening a file using the file path, pass the stream as a parameter while instantiating the Workbook class. The following sample code demonstrates opening an Excel file using stream.

Example

Opening Files of Different Microsoft Excel Versions

User may use the LoadOptions class to specify the format of the Excel file using the LoadFormat enumeration.

The LoadFormat enumeration contains many pre-defined file formats some of which are given below.

Format Types	Description
Csv	Represents a CSV file
Excel97To2003	Represents an Excel 97 - 2003 file
Xlsx	Represents an Excel 2007/2010/2013/2016/2019 and Office 365 XLSX file
Xlsm	Represents an Excel 2007/2010/2013/2016/2019 and Office 365 XLSM file
Xltx	Represents an Excel 2007/2010/2013/2016/2019 and Office 365 template XLTX file
Xltm	Represents an Excel 2007/2010/2013/2016/2019 and Office 365 macro-enabled XLTM file
Xlsb	Represents an Excel 2007/2010/2013/2016/2019 and Office 365 binary XLSB file
SpreadsheetML	Represents a SpreadsheetML file
Tsv	Represents a Tab-separated values file
TabDelimited	Represents a Tab Delimited text file
Ods	Represents an ODS file
Html	Represents an HTML file
Mhtml	Represents an MHTML file

Opening Microsoft Excel 95/5.0 Files

To open Microsoft Excel 95 files, instantiate the Workbook instance with the path or stream of the template file. Sample file to test the code can be downloaded from the following link:

Excel95_5.0.xls

Example

Opening Microsoft Excel 97 or later versions XLS Files

To open XLS files of Microsoft Excel XLS 97 or later versions, instantiate the Workbook instance with the path or stream of the template file. Or use the LoadOptions method and select the EXCEL_97_TO_2003 value in the LoadFormat enumeration.

Example

Opening Microsoft Excel 2007 or later versions XLSX Files

To open XLSX files of Microsoft Excel 2007 or later versions, instantiate the Workbook instance with the path or stream of the template file. Or use the LoadOptions class and select the XLSX value in the LoadFormat enumeration.

Example

Opening Files with Different Formats

Aspose.Cells allows developers to open spreadsheet files with different formats such as SpreadsheetML, CSV, Tab Delimited files. To open such files, developers can use the same methodology as they use for opening files of different Microsoft Excel versions.

Opening SpreadsheetML Files

SpreadsheetML files are the XML representations of your spreadsheets including all information about the spreadsheet such as formatting, formulae, etc. Since Microsoft Excel XP, an XML export option is added to Microsoft Excel that exports your spreadsheets to SpreadsheetML files.

To open SpreadsheetML files, use the LoadOptions class and select the SPREADSHEET_ML value in the LoadFormat enumeration.

Example

Opening CSV Files

Comma Separated Values (CSV) files contain records whose values are delimited or separated by commas. In CSV files, data is stored in a tabular format that has fields separated by the comma character and quoted by the double-quote character. If a field’s value contains a double quote character it is escaped with a pair of double-quote characters. You can also use Microsoft Excel to export your spreadsheet data to a CSV file.

To open CSV files, use the LoadOptions class and select the CSV value, predefined in the LoadFormat enumeration.

Example

Opening CSV files and replacing invalid characters

In Excel, when CSV file with special characters is opened, the characters are automatically replaced. The same is done by Aspose.Cells API which is demonstrated in the code example given below.

Example

Opening CSV files using preferred parser

This is not always necessary to use default parser settings for opening the CSV files. Sometimes importing CSV file does not create expected output like date format is not as expected or empty fields are handled differently. For this purpose TxtLoadOptions.PreferredParsers is available to provide own preferred parser to parse different data types as per the requirement. Following sample code demonstrates the usage of the preferred parser.

Sample source file and output files can be downloaded from the following links for testing this feature.

samplePreferredParser.csv

outputsamplePreferredParser.xlsx

Example

Opening TSV(Tab Delimited) Files

Tab-delimited files contain spreadsheet data but without any formatting. Data is arranged in rows and columns such as tables and spreadsheets. Shortly, a tab-delimited file is a special kind of plain text file with a tab between each column in the text.

To open tab-delimited files, developers should use the LoadOptions class and select the TSV value, predefined in the LoadFormat enumeration.

Example

Opening Encrypted Excel Files

We know that it’s possible to create encrypted Excel files using Microsoft Excel. To open such encrypted files, developers should call a special overloaded LoadOptions method and select the DEFAULT value, predefined in the FileFormatType enumeration. This method would also take the password for the encrypted file as shown below in the example.

Example

Aspose.Cells also supports opening password-protected MS Excel 2013 files.

There are fair chances that the Workbook constructor may throw System.OutOfMemoryException while loading large spreadsheets. This exception suggests that the available memory is insufficient to completely load the spreadsheet into the memory, therefore, the spreadsheet has to be loaded while enabling the Memory Preferences.

Opening SXC Files

StarOffice Calc is similar to Microsoft Excel and supports formulas, charts, functions, and macros. The spreadsheets created with this software are saved with the SXC extension. The SXC file is also used for OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheet files. Aspose.Cells can read SXC files as demonstrated by the following code sample.

Example

Opening FODS Files

FODS file is spreadsheet saved in OpenDocument XML without any compression. Aspose.Cells can read FODS files as demonstrated by the following code sample.

Example

Advance topics

Saving Excel files to CSV, PDF and other formats