.NET xlReader for Microsoft® Excel 3.5 (Build 3.5.0.3) Readme

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Welcome to the release of the .NET xlReader for Microsoft® Excel 3.4 Release. This readme file contains important information about this release of product.

Software Requirements

.NET Framework 3.0 or newer

Installation Instructions

For the installation of the .NET xlReader for Microsoft® Excel you are required to install .NET Framework 3.0 or newer. To install .NET xlReader for Microsoft® Excel run Setup.exe and follow installation wizard prompts.

IMPORTANT: To install component under Windows Vista or Windows 7 you need to select Setup.exe file, right click on it and select "Run as Administrator" option in popup menu.

What is .NET xlReader for Microsoft® Excel

.NET xlReader for Microsoft® Excel is a set of the classes, designed to help .NET developers to read Microsoft® Excel files from their applications. To provide familiar feel and look for the developers and allow future extension of the component, current version of the .NET xlReader for Microsoft® Excel implemented as a .NET Managed Provider with the read-only capabilities and allows to read the data from the native Microsoft® Excel files without using any additional providers or Microsoft® Excel itself. .NET Managed Reader for Microsoft® Excel is a 100% .NET managed code and designed to achieve the best performance with the minimal usage of the RAM.

What's new in Build 3.5.0.3

-  Added functionality to return visibility of a spreadsheet. Call to GetExcelSchemaTable method returns DataTable, which contains TABLE_VISIBLE column that indicates if spreadsheet is visible or hidden in a workbook.

-  Extended functionality to read corrupted Excel files.

What's new in Build 3.4.0.5

- Bug fix: Reading of XLS files fails with "Object reference not set to an instance of an object." Exception in a case if XLS file contains MERGECELL record with no entries in it.

What's new in Build 3.4.0.4

- XLSX files reading performance improvements.

What's new in Build 3.4.0.3

- Bug fix: Some rows are not populated when reading XLS files.

- Bug fix: Source Excel file not closed properly in a case of an error during file opening.

- Bug fix: Component unable to open file that contains semicolon character in the name.

What's new in Build 3.4.0.0

- Added functionality to read merged regions. Component allows to load data from merged regions into all the retuned fields of a DataTable or DataReader result.

What's new in Build 3.2.0.2

- Bug fix: Component cannot read some XLSX files generated by SPSS.

- Bug fix: GetName method of ExcelDataReader may return incorrect column name if source spreadsheet column does not contain value in a header cell.

What's new in Build 3.2.0.0

- Bug fix: Reading XLSX files of large size generates OutOfMemoryException in ASP.NET environment. Fix requires .NET Framework 3.0 or newer version of the .NET Framework.

What's new in Build 3.0.0.15

- Bug fix: Component unable to read spreadsheets that contain semicolon character in spreadsheet name.

- Extended support for XLS files generated by third-party components that do not conform to Microsoft® Excel file format.

What's new in Build 3.0.0.11

- Bug fix: Component throws ArgumentOutOfRangeException exception in some cases when XLS spreadsheet contains custom formats for numeric values.

What's new in Build 3.0.0.10

- Added support for XLS files generated by third-party components that do not conform to Microsoft® Excel file format.

What's new in Build 3.0.0.7

- Bug fix: "The invoked member is not supported in a dynamic assembly." exception is thrown when component is hosted under ASP.NET 4.0.

- Bug fix: When "Has Header" connection property set to true and spreadsheet contains only single row of data then DataTable is not returned.

What's new in Build 3.0.0.0

- Added support to read XLS files generated by OpenOffice application.

- Added support to read files stored in Microsoft® Excel XLT, XLSM, XLTM, XLTX file formats.

What's new in Build 3.0.0.5

- Added support to work with file stream in Medium Trust environment.

- Bug fix: Component does not open some of the files when another application opens Excel file first.

- Bug fix: Component could throw an exception while running in multi-threaded environment.

What's new in Build 3.0.0.0

- Added support to read XLS files generated by OpenOffice application.

- Added support to read files stored in Microsoft® Excel XLT, XLSM, XLTM, XLTX file formats.

What's new in Build 2.0.0.1001

- Bug fix: Component generates 'Not supported Data Source file format or incorrect file format specified in connection string.' exception for some of Excel files stored in XLSX file format.

What's new in Build 2.0.0.1000

- Component re-branded to .NET xlReader for Microsoft® Excel.

What's new in Build 2.0.0.0

- Added support to read files stored in Microsoft® Excel 2007 XLSX file format.

- Added support for Far East languages.

- ExcelConnection supports any type of streams (not only memory streams) as a source of connection, allowing utilizing HTTP request stream as a source of Excel files.

- Enhancements to the reader to inherit from classes located in System.Data.Common namespace.

Known issues and limitations

Current version of the .NET xlReader for Microsoft® Excel has several limitations on how it works and what it supports during reading of the data from Microsoft® Excel files. Future versions of the component could contain functionality to resolve current limitations. Current limitations are:

   - No support for password-protected Microsoft® Excel files.

   - .NET xlReader for Microsoft® Excel supports only Excel files saved in a BIFF8 binary format supported by Microsoft® Excel 97 or newer version of Microsoft® Excel, and Microsoft® Excel files saved in XLSX file format supported by Microsoft® Excel 2007.

   - Limited support for the SQL statements. Current version of the reader supports only delimited list of the spreadsheet names in following format: "shreadsheetname1;spreadsheet2;.... spreadsheetN;" and treats each spreadsheet as a table. List of the spreadsheet names should contain at least one spreadsheet name. See more details inside of examples on how to query data from the spreadsheets.

   - Component does not support updates of the data from the DataTable/DataSet to the underlying Microsoft® Excel file. ExcelDataAdapter allows populating DataTable/DataSet with the data from the spreadsheet(s), but current version does not support updates.