The fastest way to programmatically import data from Excel to Lotus Notes

There are several ways to import data from Excel to Lotus Notes/Domino. One of the most popular is the built-in Import menu option, which can be used manually and works fine in most cases.

But if you want to import Excel data programmatically, the easiest way is to use Excel's OLE Automation Objects. There are several ways to read data from Excel using OLE, and the one most often mentioned is reading data cell-by-cell. This is a very slow method, and should only be used if you want to read/write special cell properties such color, fonts, etc.

The fastest method I found so far is to read and write Excel data using blocks of data with ExcelSheet.Range method. You can with a single operation read the whole Excel sheet into an array, which extremely efficient, especially if there are many columns.

I have created an example which can be used to import people from Excel to Notes. Sample Excel file can be downloaded here.

Depending on the type of data and number of columns, the speed of this method can be up to 100 times faster than reading cell-by-cell. It imports 100 person documents per second, and the most of this time is used on creating new Notes documents, not on getting data from Excel.

Sub Initialize
'This agent imports person records from Excel to Notes. It uses Range method which makes it very fast. 
'Created by Botstation Technologies (www.botstation.com) 

Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim doc As NotesDocument
Dim xlApp As Variant, xlsheet As Variant, xlwb As Variant, xlrange As Variant
Dim filename As String, currentvalue As String
Dim batchRows As Integer, batchColumns As Integer, totalColumns As Integer
Dim x As Integer, y As Integer, startrow As Integer
Dim curRow As Long, timer1 As Long, timer2 As Long
Dim DataArray, fieldNames, hasData

timer1=Timer
filename="C:\people.xls"
batchRows=200 'process 200 rows at a time 

Set db=session.CurrentDatabase
Set xlApp = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
xlApp.Visible = True 'set Excel program to run in foreground to see what is happening 
Set xlwb=xlApp.Workbooks.Open(filename)
Set xlsheet =xlwb.Worksheets(1)

Redim fieldNames(1 To 250) As String

DataArray=xlsheet.Range("A1").Resize(batchRows, 250).Value 'get worksheet area of specified size 

For y=1 To 250 'we assume max 250 columns in the sheet 
currentvalue=Cstr(DataArray(1,y))
If currentvalue<>"" Then 'abort counting on empty column 
fieldNames(y)=currentvalue 'collect field names from the first row 
totalColumns=y
Else
y=250
End If
Next

Redim Preserve fieldNames(1 To totalColumns) As String

curRow=2
hasData=True
While hasData=True 'loop until we get to the end of Excel rows 
If curRow=2 Then startrow=2 Else startrow=1
For x=startrow To batchRows
curRow=curRow+1
If Cstr(DataArray(x,1))+Cstr(DataArray(x,2))<>"" Then 'when 2 first columns are empty, we assume that it's the end of data 
Print Cstr(curRow-2)
Set doc=New NotesDocument(db)
doc.Form="Person"
doc.Type = "Person"
For y=1 To totalColumns
currentvalue=Cstr(DataArray(x,y))
Call doc.ReplaceItemValue(fieldNames(y), currentvalue)
Next
doc.ShortName=doc.FirstName(0)+" "+doc.LastName(0)
Call doc.save(True, False)
Else
hasData=False
x=batchRows
End If
Next
If hasData=True Then DataArray=xlsheet.Range("A"+Cstr(curRow)).Resize(batchRows, totalColumns).Value 'get worksheet area 
Wend
timer2=Timer
Call xlApp.Quit() 'close Excel program 

Msgbox "Done in "+Cstr(timer2-timer1)+" seconds"
End Sub

This LotusScript was converted to HTML using the ls2html routine,
provided by Julian Robichaux at nsftools.com.

The Excel sample file was generated using this online tool: data generator

Tags: Lotus Domino Excel LotusScript