powershell excel access without installing Excel

Question

I need to be able to read an existing (password protected) Excel spreadsheet (an .xlsx file) from Powershell - but I don't want to install Excel. Every approach I've found assumes that Excel is installed on the workstation where the script is running.

I've tried the Excel viewer, but it doesn't seem to work; it won't invoke properly. I've looked at other solutions on stackoverflow, but all of them seem to want to update the excel spreadsheet, and I'm hoping I don't have to go that far.

Am I missing something obvious?

Answer 1

See the Detailed Article from Scripting Guy here. You have to use classic COM ADO in your Powershell Script.

Hey, Scripting Guy! How Can I Read from Excel Without Using Excel?

Relevant Powershell Snippet:

$strFileName = "C:DatascriptingGuysServers.xls"
$strSheetName = 'ServerList$'
$strProvider = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0"
$strDataSource = "Data Source = $strFileName"
$strExtend = "Extended Properties=Excel 8.0"
$strQuery = "Select * from [$strSheetName]"

$objConn = New-Object System.Data.OleDb.OleDbConnection("$strProvider;$strDataSource;$strExtend")
$sqlCommand = New-Object System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand($strQuery)
$sqlCommand.Connection = $objConn
$objConn.open()
$DataReader = $sqlCommand.ExecuteReader()

While($DataReader.read())
{
 $ComputerName = $DataReader[0].Tostring() 
 "Querying $computerName ..."
 Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Bios -computername $ComputerName
}  
$dataReader.close()
$objConn.close()

That said, you have stated that your Excel file is password protected.

According to this Microsoft Support article, you cannot open password protected Excel files using OLEDB Connections.

From the Article:

On the Connection tab, browse to your workbook file. Ignore the "User ID" and "Password" entries, because these do not apply to an Excel connection. (You cannot open a password-protected Excel file as a data source. There is more information on this topic later in this article.)