LinqToExcel returns null

Question

I have an excel sheet of xls format, I am using LinqToExcel to read it and then import it to my DB.

This sheet consist of about 3K row and only 6 cols. I am using .addmapping to map my class properties to the column names

The problem i have is: the cells of column "web-code" are SOMETIMES coming back as null although there are data in the cells.

Here is a sample data that is coming as null!

My Code watch

And here is a sample data where the data coming correct:

My Code Watch

I have tried applying ExcelColumn attribute for mapping, but no luck!

code:

        var factory = new ExcelQueryFactory(_excelFilePath);
        factory.AddMapping<ExcelPriceEntity>(x => x.WebCode, "WEB-CODE");
        factory.AddMapping<ExcelPriceEntity>(x => x.Type, "TYPE");
        factory.AddMapping<ExcelPriceEntity>(x => x.Style, "STYLE");
        factory.AddMapping<ExcelPriceEntity>(x => x.Qty, "QTY");
        factory.AddMapping<ExcelPriceEntity>(x => x.UnitPrice, "Unit Price");
        factory.AddMapping<ExcelPriceEntity>(x => x.Bucket, "WEBCODE W/BUCKET");

        factory.StrictMapping = StrictMappingType.ClassStrict;
        factory.TrimSpaces = TrimSpacesType.Both;
        factory.ReadOnly = true;
        var prices = factory.Worksheet<ExcelPriceEntity>(_allPricesSheetName).ToList();
        var priccerNP = prices.Where(p => p.Type.Contains("900 ARROW TAPE")).ToList();

My PriceEntity Class:

public class ExcelPriceEntity
{
    //[ExcelColumn("TYPE")] 
    public string Type { get; set; }
    public string WebCode { get; set; }
    //[ExcelColumn("STYLE")] 
    public string Style { get; set; }
    //[ExcelColumn("QTY")] 
    public string Qty { get; set; }
    //[ExcelColumn("Unit Price")] 
    public string UnitPrice { get; set; }
    //[ExcelColumn("WEBCODE W/BUCKET")] 
    public string Bucket { get; set; }
}

Answer 1

Alternate Solution: I ended up saving the excel sheet as csv file, then import to SQL table.Then i used linq-to-sql to read the data.

Root Cause: After researching i found out the problem was that the first cell of this column(web-code) was interger number, and excel trys to figure out the datatype of the column by looking at the first rows!

So next rows of (web-code) column was some text data. So excel couldn't parse it as integer, and assign null value to it!

What I could've done is, assing text value to the first cell so excel would guess the data type as string. But I didn't test that. For anyone reading this answer, try having text value in you first row if you came across the same problem