title: Is it possible to load an Excel file to memory?
body: <p>I have a website where businesses can load items for sale. Then end users can search for that item, and find all the stores that carry it.</p>
  
  <p>Most stores sell more than 100 things, and while I do have a form for inserting a single item, it's tremendously stupid to have only this for businesses to offer things.</p>
  
  <p>My idea is to have an option for businesses to upload an excel file and have my ASP.Net application extract information from the columns and populate classes, then with Entity Framework 4 magic I'll persist that information all in one fell swoop.</p>
  
  <p>Are there any pitfalls I should I should be aware of when doing this?
  Is this possible?
  Is this a very taxing process on my server (will it muck up my website)? </p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong>
  So far it seems  that in order for me to parse XML files, I need to have Office installed. I'm not sure if Winhost.com offers that.</p>
  
  <p>Another solution was to use a CSV file for receiving information. How easily would a secretary create a CSV file, remember she is probably the one who is going to be creating the file in the first place. Is this easy for a computer-impaired person to create? </p>
  
  <p>Parsing a CSV would be trivial I assume, but I want to focus on user experience and not have people curse at my website for making them learn things.</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT 2:</strong> 
  Completely forgot to mention, that <strong>of course</strong> I'll provide a template for them to use, it would be absolutely dumb to just assume they will follow the table layout. So don't take that problem into account. I'm also aware that I'll have to validate each column so they don't write 'lolgei' into the Price field or something like that.</p>