Today I faced an issue, I want to open an excel file from a Windows application; before opening the file, I want to verify that MS Excel installed on the system. I found a solution using registry from MSDN.

Here is the code snippet.

//14.0 is the version of the office installed.
var key = @"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\InstallRoot\";
var installRoot = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(key, false);
if (installRoot != null)
{
    //This will return the installation folder.
    var installedPath = installRoot.GetValue("Path");
}

But the problem with the source code is I need to know the office versions, and can identify exactly which versions are installed.

And here is the office version information.

I don’t want to know the version of the excel installed. I just want to open a XLS file created by the application. Later I found another code snippet which will return whether Excel installed or not. Here is the code snippet.

var excelApplication = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("Excel.Application");
if (null == excelApplication)
{
    //Excel not installed.
}

Happy Programming