title: Reading data from an Excel document stored in Sharepoint?
body: <p>How can I 'read' an excel 2003 document stored as a sharepoint spfile? I can retrieve the document from the library with no problems using the SPFile.OpenBinary() and then putting that into a MemoryStream.</p>
  
  <p>The original idea was to use OpenXML to interrogate the document (which will take this object type as a constructor), but the Excel version (2003) prohibits this. </p>
  
  <p>Just to cloud the issue further, there is no guarantee that I will have any Excel version on the host machine, so possibly won't be able to use the interop assemblies either. </p>
  
  <p>Suggestions or solutions will be gratefully received.  </p>
  
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  <p>When I say read, I mean pull data from named ranges, cell references etc. All of the open source libraries I have found (Exceldatareader, NOPI, OpenXML) have some limitation or another that prohibits their use. e.g. can't load macro enabled sheets</p>
  
  <p>The excel document is loaded into a sharepoint library which exposes this list as a collection of SPFile(s). These files can be read into a MemoryStream simply enough, but most of the libraries I have tried require a filestream constructor, which means writing to the filesystem on the application server</p>
  
  <p>I've not tried SpreadsheetGear, but if there's no footprint on the filesystem, then I'll take a look for sure, but this is not an option on this project. I'll update this thread with my findings...</p>
  
  <p>I'm reduced to using the PIA's. Dirty, dirty, dirty.  </p>