How to read the cell colour from Excel using C#

Question

Hi

What library ( free ) that I can use to read the cell colour of an Excel worksheet ?

I would need to read the cell colour code from one column and then check other columns if they have the same corresponding cell colour and some other matching variables ?

At the moment, I am just using oledb and it's just returning data as plain text.

Answer 1

You can use EPPlus Library, which is free for personal use.

https://www.epplussoftware.com/en

You may read about the licensing here more: https://www.epplussoftware.com/en/LicenseOverview/, go to the last section in the page that speaks about non commercial license.

Once you add EPPlus to your project, you can read the cell background color as follows.

var bgColor = sheet.Cells[rowId, colId].Style.Fill.BackgroundColor;

//To set the back ground color you may use

sheet.Cells[rowId, colId].Style.Fill.SetCellsColor(Color.Blue);

Hope this helps

Answer 2

What about OpenXML or ClosedXML?

The user that is will be working on the web application would have Excel installed in the machine.

Answer 3

You can get it with OpenXML and PatternFill Class
but it is not easy
You can find samples like in this thread
(you must add tests
if (fill.PatternFill.BackgroundColor != null)
and
if (fill.PatternFill.ForegroundColor != null)
or it will crash if they are null
)

From my tests, the Foreground is in fact the color of the brush to fill the cell
I get for example, for a cell where I changed the background color to Red or Yellow :

                    // Red  
                    // BackgroundColor.Indexed.Value 64  
                    // ForegroundColor.Rgb.Value FFFF0000  

                    // Yellow  
                    // BackgroundColor.Indexed.Value 64  
                    // ForegroundColor.Rgb.Value FFFFFF00