Drivers required for 32 bit FME with 64 bit Office installation

Article Number: 000002079 - Last Modified: Nov 25, 2011

Running 32 bit FME on a 64 bit machine with 64 bit Office installed requires a set of 32 bit drivers to allow FME to read Excel Spreadsheets and Access Databases. The error message associated with this is "Provider error `External table is not in the expected format.' "

Question

My Excel reader is failing with the error message "Provider error `External table is not in the expected format.' "

Answer

Microsoft has released Office 2010 64 bit. If you are running FME 32 bit on a 64 bit machine and attempting to read Excel spreadsheets you will require a 32 bit driver. The error message in the logfile will be as follows:

MS Excel Reader: Unable to find provider 'Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0',
falling back to 'Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0'. The 2007 Office Sytem Driver
might be missing from your system; follow this link for more
information: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=23734

MS Excel Reader: Connection failed. Connection string
`Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data
Source=C:\Users\\Documents\testing.xlsx;Extended
Properties="Excel 8.0;IMEX=1;HDR=YES"'. Provider error `External table
is not in the expected format.'

The correct driver can be downloaded from the Microsoft download site here

FME 2012 64 bit now supports Excel and Access as long as the 64 bit Office drivers are installed.