Problem with Excel Data Import in SQL Server

Hi Friends,

I'll describe something that I no longer have the documentation for, but it might point you in the right direction. I ran across a situation where I was opening an Excel file as a database from within VB (using Jet OLEDB I think). Sometimes I would get null values from cells that contained real data. What I found out was going on was that it would do a 10-row scan to try to guess what the datatype was for each column. There was a setting in the Registry that I was able to set in order to force it to scan the entire sheet before it decided what datatype I had. MAYBE you're running into a similar scenario with Excel trying to guess the datatype, deciding it's a number, and thus stripping your leading characters. Of course you could always import to a temp table and then pad with leading zeroes to 5 spaces upon insertion into the real table. Or you could create a computed column in the real table that does the padding and use the computed column in your BETWEEN statement instead of the real column.

Also Check http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/q257/8/19.asp&NoWebContent=1 and look about 1/3 way down for "Rows to Scan". This only talks about the ADO connection. It's just a WAG on my part that it might also apply to the Excel Import. You can also check the TypeGuessRows setting in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Excel\TypeGuessRows or the MaxScanRows in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Text\MaxScanRows

Considerations That Apply to Both OLE DB Providers
A Caution about Mixed Data Types

As stated previously, ADO must guess at the data type for each column in your Excel worksheet or range. (This is not affected by Excel cell formatting settings.) A serious problem can arise if you have numeric values mixed with text values in the same column. Both the Jet and the ODBC Provider return the data of the majority type, but return NULL (empty) values for the minority data type. If the two types are equally mixed in the column, the provider chooses numeric over text.For example:

• In your eight (8) scanned rows, if the column contains five (5) numeric values and three (3) text values, the provider returns five (5) numbers and three (3) null values.
• In your eight (8) scanned rows, if the column contains three (3) numeric values and five (5) text values, the provider returns three (3) null values and five (5) text values.
• In your eight (8) scanned rows, if the column contains four (4) numeric values and four (4) text values, the provider returns four (4) numbers and four (4) null values.As a result, if your column contains mixed values, your only recourse is to store numeric values in that column as text, and to convert them back to numbers when needed in the client application by using the Visual Basic VAL function or an equivalent.To work around this problem for read-only data, enable Import Mode by using the setting "IMEX=1" in the Extended Properties section of the connection string. This enforces the ImportMixedTypes=Text registry setting. However, note that updates may give unexpected results in this mode.