Looking for example code in C++ that addresses cells in excel

Question

Hi I'm am looking for c++ code examples that reads/writes to specific cells within Excel. I can read a row of data using getline but that will pull a whole row of data at once. Would be really useful and helpful to see examples that can target specific cells.

Thanks,

Answer 1

A way with Excel Interop (test with a random .xls with Office 2016 on Windows10 21H1):

            Excel::_ApplicationPtr pExcel(__uuidof(Excel::Application));
            pExcel->Workbooks->Open(L"E:\\employees.xls");
            // To test
            // pExcel->PutVisible(0, TRUE);
            Excel::_WorksheetPtr pWorkSheet = pExcel->ActiveSheet;
            Excel::RangePtr pRange = pWorkSheet->Cells;

            // Read value
            _variant_t va = pRange->Item[2][1];
            _bstr_t bstrText1(va);
            TCHAR wsValue[255];
            wcsncpy_s(wsValue, _countof(wsValue), static_cast<wchar_t const*>(bstrText1), _TRUNCATE);
            TCHAR wsBuffer[512];
            wsprintf(wsBuffer, TEXT("Cell value (A,2) : %s\r\n"), wsValue);
            OutputDebugString(wsBuffer);
            // Write value
            pRange->Item[2][1] = L"Test";
            // Read new value
            va = pRange->Item[2][1];
            _bstr_t bstrText2(va);
            wcsncpy_s(wsValue, _countof(wsValue), static_cast<wchar_t const*>(bstrText2), _TRUNCATE);
            wsprintf(wsBuffer, TEXT("Cell new value (A,2) : %s\r\n"), wsValue);
            OutputDebugString(wsBuffer);

            // To avoid "Want to save your changes" Dialog Box
            pExcel->PutDisplayAlerts(LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT, VARIANT_FALSE);            

            pExcel->Quit();

At beginning :

#import "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\VFS\ProgramFilesCommonX86\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE16\mso.dll" rename("RGB", "MSRGB") rename("DocumentProperties", "WordDocumentProperties")
#import "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\VFS\ProgramFilesCommonX86\Microsoft Shared\VBA\VBA6\VBE6EXT.OLB" raw_interfaces_only, rename("Reference", "ignorethis"), rename("VBE", "testVBE")
#import "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\Excel.exe" exclude("IFont", "IPicture") rename("RGB", "ignorethis"), rename("DialogBox", "ignorethis"), rename("VBE", "testVBE"), rename("ReplaceText", "EReplaceText"), rename("CopyFile","ECopyFile"), rename("FindText", "EFindText"), rename("NoPrompt", "ENoPrompt")

Answer 2

Hi, @Gavin Jarvie

Please refer to the tutorial: How to automate Excel from MFC and Visual C++ 2005 or Visual C++ .NET to fill or obtain data in a range using arrays
You can also try to convert the Excel file to csv format first. In a C++ application, use std::ifstream to open the file, getline reads each comma-separated line, and uses strtok function.

Best regards,

Minxin Yu

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