Read Excel values and create variables from column names in PowerShell - powershell

Question

Say I have an Excel file:
I need to create n variables called $col1 up to $coln and read in their respective values.
What is the best approch? I have been trying with a hashtable but I need to be able loop through the columns. This is my code. I have not wraped it around a loop yet. I can create the column names manually but I need to be able to index the columns in the Excel file.
$ExcelRowToRead = 2;
$ListOfColumns = #{"Job_name" = 1 ; "Run_time_start" = 2}
$excel = New-Object -ComObject excel.application;
$workbook = $excel.Workbooks.Open("pathtofile.xlsx");
$workbook.sheets.item(1).activate()
$WorkbookTotal=$workbook.Worksheets.item(1)
$ListOfColumns["Job_name"] = $WorkbookTotal.Cells.Item($ExcelRowToRead, 1) # This needs to be an index
$ListOfColumns["Job_name"].Text

Answer 1

Taking Lee_Dailey's advice here and saving first to a CSV:
$excel = New-Object -ComObject excel.application
$workbook = $excel.Workbooks.Open("pathtofile.xlsx")
$sheet = $workbook.Sheets |
Where-Object Name -eq "SheetName" |
Select-Object -First 1
$tempCsv = New-TemporaryFile
$sheet.SaveAs($tempCsv, 6)
$sheetData = Get-Content $tempCsv | ConvertFrom-Csv
At this point you have an object where you can extract its properties via $sheetData.col1, $sheetData.col2, etc. but if you really need them as separate variables, perhaps:
$sheetData |
Get-Member |
Where-Object MemberType -Eq NoteProperty |
ForEach-Object {
New-Variable -Name $_.Name -Value $sheetData.$($_.Name)
}

Answer 2

In case you don't have / want Excel:
via GitHub - dfinke/ImportExcel
> # Install-Package ImportExcel
> $sheetData = Import-Excel '.\Excel 001.xlsx'
> $sheetData[0]
col1 col2 col3
---- ---- ----
value1 value2 value3
> $sheetData[0] |
Get-Member |
Where-Object { $_.MemberType -eq 'NoteProperty' } |
Select-Object -Property Name
Name
----
col1
col2
col3
> $sheetData |
Get-Member |
Where-Object MemberType -Eq NoteProperty |
ForEach-Object {
New-Variable -Name $_.Name -Value $sheetData.$($_.Name)
}
> Get-Variable col*
Name Value
---- -----
col1 value1
col2 value2
col3 value3