Searching through a column in a spreadsheet I notice that the second line will exception ("Nullable object must have a value.") when it comes across a blank field, however the first line will succeed. I have to add the Bool cast to the second line because otherwise I get "Cannot convert Nullable<bool> to bool". I assume this is the issue, but is there a way around that to allow blank fields to be checked?
keyFoundCell = _ws.Cells["a:a"].FirstOrDefault(cell => cell.Value?.ToString() == field.Key);
keyFoundCell = _ws.Cells["a:a"].FirstOrDefault(cell => (bool)cell.Value?.ToString().Equals(field.Key, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));
In both EPPlus and Excel Interop you can read a cell's contents using the Text property instead of the Value property if you want to operate on the cell's visible contents and avoid nulls. Value returns an object which might be null, but Text returns the visible text as a string which can be empty but won't be null.
If we're using Value.ToString() or Value?.ToString() then chances are we'd be better off with Text because that's a giveaway that we want the text we see, not the value.