getting an Unexpected error from external database

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 the import wizard, but when I select that sheet, Access goes unresponsive, and after several seconds gives me a

"Unexpected error from external database driver (1)"

Is this due to the size of the sheet or is there something in the cells that stops it from working. Other sheets from the same file import with no problem.

Answer 1

Another issue that is discovered is if the excel file is saved as a binary excel worksheet just resave it as an excel workbook and it loaded fine.

Answer 2

I had same issue, after getting a security update in Windows7 this error occurred. We have too many excel files to perform an open/close operation so I decided to try other ways.

1- Return a restore point when Access worked fine: It did not work in my case. The only change in software configuration is a security update and it seems security update still causes problem.

2- Reducing rows, columns etc: It did not work for me; first file that access tried to reach had 10k rows, reducing this rows to 3 was not the solution.

3- Trying to modify connection string: It did not work for me, it is not very reasonable as well; connection has been working for years, suddenly why would it stop? In some cases it does but not this time.

4- Uninstalling most recent security update worked for in my case. Here is the uninstalled security update.

Screen shot of uninstalled security update

Good luck with solving.

Answer 3

I just experienced this problem too and found a very simple, easy solution. I noticed that my spreadsheet had a custom name so I decided to see if that was causing the problem. I changed it to the default name of "Sheet1" and, sure enough, it worked!!

Answer 4

Use this

OleDbConnection conObj = new OleDbConnection("Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=C:\\a.XLS;Extended Properties=Excel 8.0;")

instead of this

OleDbConnection conObj = new OleDbConnection("Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\\a.XLS;Extended Properties=Excel 8.0;")