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Import data from Excel or export data to Excel with SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)

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Applies to: SQL Server SSIS Integration Runtime in Azure Data Factory

This article describes the connection information that you have to provide, and the settings that you have to configure, to import data from Excel or export data to Excel with SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS).

The following sections contain the information you need to use Excel successfully with SSIS, and to understand and troubleshoot common problems:

  1. The tools you can use.

  2. The files you need.

  3. The connection information that you have to provide, and the settings that you have to configure, when you load data from or to Excel with SSIS.

  4. Known issues and limitations.

Tools you can use

You can import data from Excel or export data to Excel with SSIS by using one of the following tools:

Get the files you need to connect to Excel

Before you can import data from Excel or export data to Excel with SSIS, you may have to download the connectivity components for Excel if they're not already installed. The connectivity components for Excel are not installed by default.

Use the table within Unable to use the Access ODBC, OLEDB or DAO interfaces outside Office Click-to-Run to understand if additional components are necessary for your environment.

Note: The Office System Drivers are only supported under certain scenarios, please refer to Considerations for server-side Automation of Office for specific guidance.

Specify Excel as your data source

The first step is to indicate that you want to connect to Excel.

In SSIS

In SSIS, create an Excel Connection Manager to connect to the Excel source or destination file. There are several ways to create the connection manager:

  • In the Connection Managers area, right-click and select New connection. In the Add SSIS Connection Manager dialog box, select EXCEL and then Add.

  • On the SSIS menu, select New connection. In the Add SSIS Connection Manager dialog box, select EXCEL and then Add.

  • Create the connection manager at the same time that you configure the Excel Source or the Excel Destination on the Connection manager page of the Excel Source Editor or of the Excel Destination Editor.

In the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard

In the Import and Export Wizard, on the Choose a Data Source or Choose a Destination page, select Microsoft Excel in the Data source list.

If you don't see Excel in the list of data sources, make sure you're running the 32-bit wizard. The Excel connectivity components are typically 32-bit files and aren't visible in the 64-bit wizard.

Excel file and file path

The first piece of info to provide is the path and file name for the Excel file. You provide this info in the Excel Connection Manager Editor in an SSIS package, or on the Choose a Data Source or Choose a Destination page of the Import and Export Wizard.

Enter the path and file name in the following format:

  • For a file on the local computer, C:\TestData.xlsx.

  • For a file on a network share, \\Sales\Data\TestData.xlsx.

Or, click Browse to locate the spreadsheet by using the Open dialog box.

Important

You can't connect to a password-protected Excel file.

Excel version

The second piece of info to provide is the version of the Excel file. You provide this info in the Excel Connection Manager Editor in an SSIS package, or on the Choose a Data Source or Choose a Destination page of the Import and Export Wizard.

Select the version of Microsoft Excel that was used to create the file, or another compatible version. For example, if you had trouble installing the 2016 connectivity components, you can install the 2010 components and select Microsoft Excel 2007-2010 in this list.

You may not be able to select newer Excel versions in the list if you only have older versions of the connectivity components installed. The Excel version list includes all the versions of Excel supported by SSIS. The presence of items in this list does not indicate that the required connectivity components are installed. For example, Microsoft Excel 2016 appears in the list even if you have not installed the 2016 connectivity components.

First row has column names

If you're importing data from Excel, the next step is to indicate whether the first row of the data contains column names. You provide this info in the Excel Connection Manager Editor in an SSIS package, or on the Choose a Data Source page of the Import and Export Wizard.

  • If you disable this option because the source data doesn't contain column names, the wizard uses F1, F2, and so forth, as column headings.
  • If the data contains column names, but you disable this option, the wizard imports the column names as the first row of data.
  • If the data does not contain column names, but you enable this option, the wizard uses the first row of source data as the column names. In this case, the first row of source data is no longer included in the data itself.

If you're exporting data from Excel, and you enable this option, the first row of exported data includes the column names.

Worksheets and ranges

There are three types of Excel objects that you can use as the source or destination for your data: a worksheet, a named range, or an unnamed range of cells that you specify with its address.

  • Worksheet. To specify a worksheet, append the $ character to the end of the sheet name and add delimiters around the string - for example, [Sheet1$]. Or, look for a name that ends with the $ character in the list of existing tables and views.

  • Named range. To specify a named range, provide the range name - for example, MyDataRange. Or, look for a name that does not end with the $ character in the list of existing tables and views.

  • Unnamed range. To specify a range of cells that you haven't named, append the $ character to the end of the sheet name, add the range specification, and add delimiters around the string - for example, [Sheet1$A1:B4].

To select or specify the type of Excel object that you want to use as the source or destination for your data, do one of the following things:

In SSIS

In SSIS, on the Connection manager page of the Excel Source Editor or of the Excel Destination Editor, do one of the following things:

  • To use a worksheet or a named range, select Table or view as the Data access mode. Then, in the Name of the Excel sheet list, select the worksheet or named range.

  • To use an unnamed range that you specify with its address, select SQL command as the Data access mode. Then, in the SQL command text field, enter a query like the following example:

    SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$A1:B5]

In the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard

In the Import and Export Wizard, do one of the following things:

  • When you're importing from Excel, do one of the following things:

    • To use a worksheet or a named range, on the Specify table copy or query page, select Copy data from one or more tables or views. Then, on the Select Source Tables and Views page, in the Source column, select the source worksheets and named ranges.

    • To use an unnamed range that you specify with its address, on the Specify table copy or query page, select Write a query to specify the data to transfer. Then, on the Provide a Source Query page, provide a query similar to the following example:

      SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$A1:B5]

  • When you're exporting to Excel, do one of the following things:

    • To use a worksheet or a named range, on the Select Source Tables and Views page, in the Destination column, select the destination worksheets and named ranges.

    • To use an unnamed range that you specify with its address, on the Select Source Tables and Views page, in the Destination column, enter the range in the following format without delimiters: Sheet1$A1:B5. The wizard adds the delimiters.

After you select or enter the Excel objects to import or export, you can also do the following things on the Select Source Tables and Views page of the wizard:

  • Review column mappings between source and destination by selecting Edit Mappings.

  • Preview sample data to make sure it's what you expect by selecting Preview.

Issues with data types

Data types

The Excel driver recognizes only a limited set of data types. For example, all numeric columns are interpreted as doubles (DT_R8), and all string columns (other than memo columns) are interpreted as 255-character Unicode strings (DT_WSTR). SSIS maps the Excel data types as follows:

  • Numeric - double-precision float (DT_R8)

  • Currency - currency (DT_CY)

  • Boolean - Boolean (DT_BOOL)

  • Date/time - datetime (DT_DATE)

  • String - Unicode string, length 255 (DT_WSTR)

  • Memo - Unicode text stream (DT_NTEXT)

Data type and length conversions

SSIS does not implicitly convert data types. As a result, you may have to use Derived Column or Data Conversion transformations to convert Excel data explicitly before loading it into a destination other than Excel, or to convert data from a source other than Excel before loading it into an Excel destination.

Here are some examples of the conversions that may be required:

  • Conversion between Unicode Excel string columns and non-Unicode string columns with specific codepage.

  • Conversion between 255-character Excel string columns and string columns of different lengths.

  • Conversion between double-precision Excel numeric columns and numeric columns of other types.

Tip

If you're using the Import and Export Wizard, and your data requires some of these conversions, the wizard configures the necessary conversions for you. As a result, even when you want to use an SSIS package, it may be useful to create the initial package by using the Import and Export Wizard. Let the wizard create and configure connection managers, sources, transformations, and destinations for you.

Issues with importing

Empty rows

When you specify a worksheet or a named range as the source, the driver reads the contiguous block of cells starting with the first non-empty cell in the upper-left corner of the worksheet or range. As a result, your data doesn't have to start in row 1, but you can't have empty rows in the source data. For example, you can't have an empty row between the column headers and the data rows, or a title followed by empty rows at the top of the worksheet.

If there are empty rows above your data, you can't query the data as a worksheet. In Excel, you have to select your range of data and assign a name to the range, and then query the named range instead of the worksheet.

Missing values

The Excel driver reads a certain number of rows (by default, eight rows) in the specified source to guess at the data type of each column. When a column appears to contain mixed data types, especially numeric data mixed with text data, the driver decides in favor of the majority data type, and returns null values for cells that contain data of the other type. (In a tie, the numeric type wins.) Most cell formatting options in the Excel worksheet do not seem to affect this data type determination.

You can modify this behavior of the Excel driver by specifying Import Mode to import all values as text. To specify Import Mode, add IMEX=1 to the value of Extended Properties in the connection string of the Excel connection manager in the Properties window.

Truncated text

When the driver determines that an Excel column contains text data, the driver selects the data type (string or memo) based on the longest value that it samples. If the driver does not discover any values longer than 255 characters in the rows that it samples, it treats the column as a 255-character string column instead of a memo column. Therefore, values longer than 255 characters may be truncated.

To import data from a memo column without truncation, you have two options:

  • Make sure that the memo column in at least one of the sampled rows contains a value longer than 255 characters

  • Increase the number of rows sampled by the driver to include such a row. You can increase the number of rows sampled by increasing the value of TypeGuessRows under the following registry key:

Redistributable components version Registry key
Excel 2016 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Access Connectivity Engine\Engines\Excel
Excel 2010 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Access Connectivity Engine\Engines\Excel

Issues with exporting

Create a new destination file

In SSIS

Create an Excel Connection Manager with the path and file name of the new Excel file that you want to create. Then, in the Excel Destination Editor, for Name of the Excel sheet, select New to create the destination worksheet. At this point, SSIS creates the new Excel file with the specified worksheet.

In the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard

On the Choose a Destination page, select Browse. In the Open dialog box, navigate to the folder where you want the new Excel file to be created, provide a name for the new file, and then select Open.

Export to a large enough range

When you specify a range as the destination, an error occurs if the range has fewer columns than the source data. However, if the range that you specify has fewer rows than the source data, the wizard continues writing rows without error and extends the range definition to match the new number of rows.

Export long text values

Before you can successfully save strings longer than 255 characters to an Excel column, the driver must recognize the data type of the destination column as memo and not string.

  • If an existing destination table already contains rows of data, then the first few rows that are sampled by the driver must contain at least one instance of a value longer than 255 characters in the memo column.

Related content

For more information about the components and procedures described in this article, see the following articles:

About SSIS

Excel Connection Manager
Excel Source
Excel Destination
Loop through Excel Files and Tables by Using a Foreach Loop Container
Working with Excel Files with the Script Task

About the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard

Connect to an Excel Data Source
Get started with this simple example of the Import and Export Wizard

Import data from Excel to SQL Server or Azure SQL Database