c# - Programmatically finding an Excel file's Excel version

Question

I'm using an OleDbConnection to connect to a spreadsheet from a C# program. One of the parameters in the connection string is the Excel version.

"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:Book1.xls;Extended Properties="Excel 8.0;HDR=YES"

Given the path of an Excel file how can I find out which Excel format version it uses?

Thanks in advance,

T.

Answer 1

I addition to what was said and apart from using Excel automation to open the file you can try reading file version from your code:

xls files: those are saved as structured storage. you can use the technique from the article here: How To Determine Which Version of Excel Wrote a Workbook

xlsx files: you can open them as zip files. Version is in app.xml file AppVersion field.