Excel Destination

The Excel destination loads data into worksheets or ranges in Microsoft Excel workbooks.

The Excel destination provides three different data access modes for loading data:

• A table or view.
• A table or view specified in a variable.
• The results of an SQL statement. The query can be a parameterized query.

The Excel destination uses an Excel connection manager to connect to a data source, and the connection manager specifies the workbook file to use. For more information, see Excel Connection Manager.

The Excel destination has one regular input and one error output.

Usage Considerations

The Excel Connection Manager uses the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Jet 4.0 and its supporting Excel ISAM (Indexed Sequential Access Method) driver to connect and read and write data to Excel data sources.

Many existing Microsoft Knowledge Base articles document the behavior of this provider and driver, and although these articles are not specific to Integration Services or its predecessor Data Transformation Services, you may want to know about certain behaviors that can lead to unexpected results. For general information on the use and behavior of the Excel driver, see HOWTO: Use ADO with Excel Data from Visual Basic or VBA.

The following behaviors of the Jet provider that is included with the Excel driver can lead to unexpected results when saving data to an Excel destination.

• Saving text data. When the Excel driver saves text data values to an Excel destination, the driver precedes the text in each cell with the single quote character (') to ensure that the saved values will be interpreted as text values. If you have or develop other applications that read or process the saved data, you may need to include special handling for the single quote character that precedes each text value.
• Saving memo (ntext) data. To 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 the destination table already contains data, the first few rows that the driver samples must contain at least one value in the memo column that is longer than 255 characters. If the package creates the destination table during package design or at run time, the CREATE TABLE statement must use LONGTEXT, or one of its synonyms, as the data type for the memo column.
• 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). Integration Services maps the Excel data types as follows:
  • Numeric    double-precision float (DT_R8)
  • Currency     currency (DT_CY)
  • Boolean     Boolean (DT_BOOL)
  • Date/time     date (DT_DATE)
  • String     Unicode string, length 255 (DT_WSTR)
  • Memo     Unicode text stream (DT_NTEXT)
• Data type and length conversions. Integration Services does not implicitly convert data types. As a result, you may need to use the Derived Column or Data Conversion transformations to convert Excel data explicitly before loading it into a non-Excel destination, or to convert non-Excel data before loading it into an Excel destination. In this case, it may be useful to create the initial package by using the Import and Export Wizard, which configures the necessary conversions for you. Some examples of the conversions that may be required include the following:
  • Conversion between Unicode Excel string columns and non-Unicode string columns with specific codepages.
  • 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.

Configuring the Excel Destination

You can set properties through SSIS Designer or programmatically.

For more information about the properties that you can set in the Excel Destination Editor dialog box, click one of the following topics:

• Excel Destination Editor (Connection Manager Page)
• Excel Destination Editor (Mappings Page)
• Excel Destination Editor (Error Output Page)

The Advanced Editor dialog box reflects all the properties that can be set programmatically. For more information about the properties that you can set in the Advanced Editor dialog box or programmatically, click one of the following topics:

• Common Properties
• Destination Custom Properties

For more information about how to set properties, click one of the following topics:

• How to: Set the Properties of a Data Flow Component Using a Component Editor
• How to: Set the Properties of a Data Flow Component in the Properties Window
• How to: Set the Properties of a Data Flow Component Using the Advanced Editor

For information about looping through a group of Excel files, see How to: Loop through Excel Files and Tables.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Loop through Excel Files and Tables

Concepts

Excel Source
Integration Services Variables
Creating Package Data Flow
Integration Services Considerations on 64-bit Computers

Other Resources

Integration Services Destinations
Working with Excel Files with the Script Task

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance

Change History