Referencing columns in LinqToExcel using ordinal position

calendar_today Asked Jun 4, 2014
thumb_up 7 upvotes
history Updated April 16, 2026

Question posted 2014 · +5 upvotes

I am in the unusual position of having two different templates for an Excel upload, one that is ‘human friendly’ and one that is machine generated. As such, the column data headers are different and it is difficult to align them.

As such, I would like to reference the column mappings using the ordinal position rather than the ‘name’ of the column. Currently I have this:

var excel = new ExcelQueryFactory(excelFileName);
excel.AddMapping<Student>(x => x.FirstName, "First Name");
excel.AddMapping<Student>(x => x.LastName, "Last Name");
excel.AddMapping<Student>(x => x.LastFour, "Last 4 Student ID");
excel.AddMapping<Student>(x => x.LastDate, "Last Date");

and I would like to do something like this:

var excel = new ExcelQueryFactory(excelFileName);
excel.AddMapping<Student>(x => x.FirstName, "A");
excel.AddMapping<Student>(x => x.LastName, "C");
excel.AddMapping<Student>(x => x.LastFour, "G");
excel.AddMapping<Student>(x => x.LastDate, "H");

where the letters are the column references in Excel.

Is there a way to do this?

Accepted answer +7 upvotes

if you order is the same you can call

        var columnnames= excel.GetColumnNames("worksheetName");
        excel.AddMapping<Student>(x => x.FirstName, columnnames[0]);
        excel.AddMapping<Student>(x => x.FirstName, columnnames[1]);
        excel.AddMapping<Student>(x => x.LastFour, columnnames[2]);

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