title: Read excel columns as text
body: <p>I want to read all columns as text values only from an excel file in a web application irrespective of the type of the data(date, number etc).</p>
  
  <p>Please see the connection string used. Only ACE driver is installed and we can't use any other drivers in production server.</p>
  
  <pre><code>Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=c:\myFolder\myOldExcelFile.xls;
                               Extended Properties="Excel 12.0;HDR=YES;IMEX=1";
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Setting <code>IMEX=1</code> doesn't work. It returns null for some values.</p>
  
  <p>I could see a lot of articles but am couldn't see a right answer.</p>
  
  <p>Any help would be appreciated.</p>