SSIS and Excel drivers 32bit vs 64bit

I recently had to revisit an SSIS package that required some changes to import data from an Excel file. It had been a long time since I’d last done one of those, I still remember the pain now…

If you’ve ever tried to read Excel files using SSIS then its likely you’ve come across the old 32bit vs 64bit driver problem. So in my case, I’ve got 64bit Office installed but when developing SSIS packages using SSDT you can only do it if you’ve got the 32bit driver installed. Don’t get me started on why…

This wouldn’t be a problem but unfortunately the 32bit driver will complain if you try and install it, saying something like:-

You cannot install the 32-bit version of Microsoft Access Database Engine as you have 64-bit Office products installed etc…

Well that’s great…

But wait, there is a way to install it without getting any complaints! Open up a command line (usually just type “cmd” and hit Enter) and change directory to wherever you downloaded the driver. Once you’re there just type the name of the file followed by a space then “/quiet” (at least for the latest version of the drivers as of 2019, or “/passive” for older versions of the drivers). So in your command line window/console you should have something like:-

C:\Users\SomeUser\Downloads\AccessDatabaseEngine.exe /quiet

Hit Enter and after about 30 seconds it should have installed, note that it will not inform you that it has installed. Open up your SSIS project and try again. Hopefully this time it should work and no more errors like:-

The ‘Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0’ provider is not registered on the local machine.

So, assuming that you are developing SSIS packages that will need to read Excel files, and you’re on a 64 bit version of Windows, when you download the driver you must choose the 32 bit version NOT the 64 bit version!

The latest available version of the driver can downloaded from here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=54920