SSIS Error Importing XLS File - External table is not in the expected format

Question

I'm trying to open the following XLS file in SSIS:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E_fNSlRTMuoYnH7VERFB8hXbcxssKSGr/view?usp=sharing

I can open it in Excel, without any error or warning from Excel.

But When I try to open it in SSIS or even In PowerBi, I get the following message: "External table is not in the expected format". If I open it in Excel and then Save again in the same XLS format, I can open it in SSIS.

I've installed the following OLE DB Drivers: AccessDatabaseEngine_X64 (x64) AccessDatabaseEngine (x86)

And I've tried with the following providers:

Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Extended Properties=Excel 12.0; 
Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Extended Properties=Excel 8.0;
Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Extended Properties=Excel 8.0;
Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Extended Properties=Excel 5.0;

Any idea about why the file is not opening in SSIS? I don't want to be opening every file, every day, because there are many files every day that I need to load.

I'm using Visual Studio 2019 with projet compatibility for SSIS 2017. Thanks!

Answer 1

The first issue that the excel reader is going to have is the image sitting there throws the tooling off. As soon as I deleted the image and saved it, the tooling started to work.

The next problem you're going to run into is that you need to skip the first N rows before your data begins. Since there's no functionality in the JET driver to do that, you're going to need to do some magic to work with the data set.

Google the terms Excel, IMEX and registry keys and you'll get into the voodoo of Excel type inference (based on the first 8 rows) and it's ugly.

At this point in my career, I either push back and ask for a cleaner extract of data from the provider. Otherwise, I increase the estimate and write a custom Script Component Source that uses the JET/ACE drivers to extract the data and then shape and type the data into my data flow.