getting an Unexpected error from external database driver (1) when importing data from excel to access

Question

I have a 2010 Excel file with a sheet that spans 34864 rows and 1387 columns. I\'m trying to import it into Access 2010 with

Answer 1

I had the exact same error. The spreadsheet was created from another software (SAP). Since it was not created by Office, Excel was not able to read it (!?!). I have to open them in Excel, save it, and then load it in Access and it works! As a worst case scenario, let's say you have dozens of files, you could just open and close them by VBA code before import.

Answer 2

Save your Excel sheet to a 'Comma delimited' .CSV file, and then upload it as Text File. For me, this works fine.

The problem is that in .xls(x) all kind of lay-out issues are present. Converting it into .CSV removes all lay-out related mark up and converts in into 'raw' data.

all the best!

Answer 3

I was getting this error when importing from a XLSB file, save the file as XLSX file and then import, should work

Answer 4

Solved for Windows 7:

Uninstall Security Update KB4041681 and KB4041678 both(Related to Excel and Jet/ACE provider)

Answer 5

In my case the spreadsheet was linked to another spreadsheet. I was importing a subset of the original sheet. I created a new sheet and copied the data column by column to notepad and then to the new sheet removing the links. There was something in the links which was causing the problem.
BTW: it was this one set of data since I've done this import sequence from this one spreadsheet to this database more than 50 times. Halving the data worked for the first (larger) half of the data, but not for the second.

Answer 6

Along the lines of RHiggins answer:

In my case Jet OleDb.4.0 threw this error (oledbconnection.open()) because the name of a worksheet in a workbook (.xls) was too long.