Troubleshooting Could not find installable ISAM er

Question

I have 32-bit MS Office 2013 Installed, along with the 32-bit office redistributable and a small c# console application set to compile to 32-bit.

The following code causes an OleDbException stating "Could not find installable ISAM."

public void GetData()
{
    var fileName = @"c:\temp\Sales DataBase_Test.accdb";
    var connection = @"Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Soure='" + fileName + "'";
    using (var conn = new OleDbConnection(connection))
    {
        conn.Open();
        conn.Close();
    }
}

Instead of randomly applying solutions from a dozen vague answers, I'd like to know:

• what that actually means?
• What is an installable ISAM?
• How do I get a list of them?
• How do I know which are available?
• Finally, how do I know which Providers are available on any given machine?
• Is there a way to enumerate these things and properly troubleshoot?

Answer 1

My issue turned out to be aging eyes and fat fingers: "Data Source" was misspelled as "Data Soure".

This doesn't answer my questions, but may help someone else. I generated a working connection string by linking the data in Excel and then copying and pasting and then removing what I didn't need.

1. Get data from access (pick any table).

2. Next open connections.

   

3. You can then look at the properties of the connection and copy a working connection string which you can paste into your code and edit.