title: Reading Excel files from C#
body: <p>Is there a free or open source library to read Excel files (.xls) directly from a C# program? </p>
  
  <p>It does not need to be too fancy, just to select a worksheet and read the data as strings. So far, I've been using Export to Unicode text function of Excel, and parsing the resulting (tab-delimited) file, but I'd like to eliminate the manual step.</p>