Installation of the Microsoft ODBC driver (for AOKI .xlsx files and others)
Microsoft provides a free driver for programmers which allow to read Excel files. CSVUserlistBrowser makes use of
this driver. But for this purpose the user must have the ODBC driver "Microsoft Excel Driver (*.xls, *.xlsx, *.xlsm, *.xlsb)"
installed in his system.
How do I obtain this driver?
- Visit the Microsoft download page https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=54920
- Download Microsoft Access Database Engine 2016 Redistributable.
- You need the 32 bit version AccessDatabaseEngine.exe even when you have a 64 bit system! (That the Excel driver is hidden in AccessDatabaseEngine.exe may not be obvious at first look. But this is the correct installer.)
- Install AccessDatabaseEngine.exe.
Solution of possible issues
As seldomly in the PC and IT sector everything works without trouble ;-) I want to pass on a hint I received from a Russian user
of CSVUserlistBrowser. On his system the installation of the Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable obviously failed because he had
a 64 bit version of Microsoft Office installed. As he told me the installation was successful when he installed the driver with the argument
"/passive" on a command line.
AccessDatabaseEngine.exe /passive
or
AccessDatabaseEngine.exe /quiet
I pass on this hint without comment. I myself never had to use this trick on three different PCs. But maybe it can
help users who have trouble.
Limits of the Microsoft ODBC driver
In CSVUserlistBrowser this driver is also used to import ITU monitoring and numbersoddities tables in Excel style.
Unfortunately the driver does not cover all sorts of formats in latest Excel versions. Microsoft seems not be willing to update the driver any more.
This means that it may be impossible in future to completely read Excel tables in CSVUserlistBrowser. For example I did not manage to read Excel tables from
Dan Ferguson (swskeds, SWBC) successfully without errors. The Microsoft ODBC driver skipped several cells and erroneously delivered their content as empty.
It would have been a wonder if Microsoft gave away everything for free. To code an Office Suite myself like LibreOffice in CSVUserlistBrowser
is beyond my capabilities.
Notice: The recently available Microsoft Access Database Engine 2016 (english) unfortunately does not work! Trying to close the
database connection results in a crash! So far I could not find out the reason for this.