如何在没有安装Office的情况下处理vb.net中的excel文件

I am fairly new to VB.net and never used it for processing Office files. Right now I have to look at Excel file and send some emails based on the data in the cells. I do not need to write anything to these files. So far I have read quite a bit about PIAs and so far it looks that I have to design my application for particular Office version? Is there a way to write the application which could handle files created by different versions of MS Excel? I would like to be able to process these files without Office being installed on the computer at all, is there any way to do it?I am fairly new to VB.net and never used it for