I was wondering if it was possible to import Excel documents using SSIS by referencing a column by its position? For example, import columns A,D,M,AA, etc. I ask because I need to load in several Excel documents from a third party. Each document contains the same data type in the corresponding columns, except the column names are different for each document.
Thanks!
Yes but you won't be using the Excel driver and connection manager. Instead, you will use the OLE DB driver and write a SQL Query against the file. For anything but the most basic Excel files, this is my go-to approach for importing data out of Excel.
Various incarnations of my approach
- Excel Source as Lookup Transformation Connection
- script task in SSIS to import excel spreadsheet
- Import a single Excel cell into SSIS
