| ODBC | |
|   | |
| Standard | |
|   |   | 
| Driver={Microsoft Excel Driver (*.xls)};DriverId=790;Dbq=C:\MyExcel.xls;DefaultDir=c:\mypath; | |
|  Excel |   | 
| This is a compiled connection strings reference list on how to connect to Excel. | |
| OLE DB | |
|   | |
| Standard | |
|   |   | 
| Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\MyExcel.xls;Extended Properties="Excel 8.0;HDR=Yes;IMEX=1"; | |
| Important note!                         The quota " in the string needs to be escaped using your language specific escape syntax.                         c#, c++   \"                         VB6, VBScript   ""                         xml (web.config etc)   "                         or maybe use a single quota '.  | 
| "HDR=Yes;" indicates that the first row contains columnnames, not data. "HDR=No;" indicates the opposite.  | 
| "IMEX=1;" tells the driver to always read "intermixed" (numbers, dates, strings etc) data columns as text. Note that this option might affect excel sheet write access negative.  | 
| SQL syntax "SELECT * FROM [sheet1$]". I.e. excel worksheet name followed by a "$" and wrapped in "[" "]" brackets.  | 
| Check out the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Excel] located registry REG_DWORD "TypeGuessRows". That's the key to not letting Excel use only the first 8 rows to guess the columns data type. Set this value to 0 to scan all rows. This might hurt performance.  | 
| If the Excel workbook is protected by a password, you cannot open it for data access, even by supplying the correct password with your connection string. If you try, you receive the following error message: "Could not decrypt file."  | 
Sarah Ding Note:

"IMEX=1;" tells the driver to always read "intermixed" data columns as text 
    










