How to loop through Excel files and load them into a database using SSIS package?

Question

I need to create an SSIS package for importing data from multiple Excel files into an SQL database. I plan on using nested Foreach Loop containers to achieve this. One Foreach File Enumerator and nested within that, a Foreach ADO.net Schema Rowset Enumerator

Problem to consider: Sheet names are different between excel files but structure remains the same.

I have created an Excel Connection Manager, but the Schema Rowset Enumerator is not accepting the connection manager in the Enumerator configuration.

After researching, I found that you can use the Jet Ole db provider to connect to an excel file. However, I can only specify Microsoft Access Database Files as the data source. Attempting to insert an Excel File as the data source fails

After more research I found that you can use the Odbc Data Provider with a connection string instead of a DSN. After inserting a connection string specifying the Excel file this also failed

I have been told not to use a Script Task to accomplish this and even after trying a last ditch effort to extract data from sheets be accessing the sheets by index I found that the index for the sheets in the different excel files are different

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Tham

Filenames end in ".xslx". The File Enumerator searches for these files : "[wildcard].xls[wildcard]". Excel Connection Manager autodetected the Format as "Microsoft Excel 2007". – Tham

Answer 1

Here is one possible way of doing this based on the assumption that there will not be any blank sheets in the Excel files and also all the sheets follow the exact same structure. Also, under the assumption that the file extension is only .xlsx

Following example was created using SSIS 2008 R2 and Excel 2007. The working folder for this example is F:\Temp\

In the folder path F:\Temp\, create an Excel 2007 spreadsheet file named States_1.xlsx with two worksheets.

Sheet 1 of States_1.xlsx contained the following data

Sheet 2 of States_1.xlsx contained the following data

In the folder path F:\Temp\, create another Excel 2007 spreadsheet file named States_2.xlsx with two worksheets.

Sheet 1 of States_2.xlsx contained the following data

Sheet 2 of States_2.xlsx contained the following data

Create a table in SQL Server named dbo.Destination using the below create script. Excel sheet data will be inserted into this table.

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Destination](
    [Id] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
    [State] [nvarchar](255) NULL,
    [Country] [nvarchar](255) NULL,
    [FilePath] [nvarchar](255) NULL,
    [SheetName] [nvarchar](255) NULL,
CONSTRAINT [PK_Destination] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([Id] ASC)) ON [PRIMARY]
GO

The table is currently empty.

Create a new SSIS package and on the package, create the following 4 variables. FolderPath will contain the folder where the Excel files are stored. FilePattern will contain the extension of the files that will be looped through and this example works only for .xlsx. FilePath will be assigned with a value by the Foreach Loop container but we need a valid path to begin with for design time and it is currently populated with the path F:\Temp\States_1.xlsx of the first Excel file. SheetName will contain the actual sheet name but we need to populate with initial value Sheet1$ to avoid design time error.

In the package's connection manager, create an ADO.NET connection with the following configuration and name it as ExcelSchema.

Select the provider Microsoft Office 12.0 Access Database Engine OLE DB Provider under .Net Providers for OleDb. Provide the file path F:\Temp\States_1.xlsx

Click on the All section on the left side and set the property Extended Properties to Excel 12.0 to denote the version of Excel. Here in this case 12.0 denotes Excel 2007. Click on the Test Connection to make sure that the connection succeeds.

Create an Excel connection manager named Excel as shown below.

Create an OLE DB Connection SQL Server named SQLServer. So, we should have three connections on the package as shown below.

We need to do the following connection string changes so that the Excel file is dynamically changed as the files are looped through.

On the connection ExcelSchema, configure the expression ServerName to use the variable FilePath. Click on the ellipsis button to configure the expression.

Similarly on the connection Excel, configure the expression ServerName to use the variable FilePath. Click on the ellipsis button to configure the expression.

On the Control Flow, place two Foreach Loop containers one within the other. The first Foreach Loop container named Loop files will loop through the files. The second Foreach Loop container will through the sheets within the container. Within the inner For each loop container, place a Data Flow Task that will read the Excel files and load data into SQL

Configure the first Foreach loop container named Loop files as shown below:

Configure the first Foreach loop container named Loop sheets as shown below:

Inside the data flow task, place an Excel Source, Derived Column and OLE DB Destination as shown below:

Configure the Excel Source to read the appropriate Excel file and the sheet that is currently being looped through.

Configure the derived column to create new columns for file name and sheet name. This is just to demonstrate this example but has no significance.

Configure the OLE DB destination to insert the data into the SQL table.

Below screenshot shows successful execution of the package.

Below screenshot shows that data from the 4 workbooks in 2 Excel spreadsheets that were creating in the beginning of this answer is correctly loaded into the SQL table dbo.Destination.

Hilliary

Thank you Siva. This was a useful answer. However it kept failing on my side. At the end of the day I ended up writing a Powershell script that detects the target sheet and changes the name. Making it so that all the sheets have the same name to reference them by. Thank you for your answer – Tham

This worked great for me. At first it kept failing and it was because I had to set the Debugging 64 bits to FALSE. To do this go to Project --> YourProjectProperties --> Debugging --> Run64BitRuntime = FALSE – Electroballistics

This was very useful, but I wanted to make the filename dynamic that I don't wanted to put the filename everytime by myself. Is there any possibilities? – Radborne

Sorry but I do not understand what is ExcelSchema connection manager used for in this example. Please can someone shed some light? – Heptahedron

Answer 2

I ran into an article that illustrates a method where the data from the same excel sheet can be imported in the selected table until there is no modifications in excel with data types.

If the data is inserted or overwritten with new ones, importing process will be successfully accomplished, and the data will be added to the table in SQL database.

The article may be found here: http://www.sqlshack.com/using-ssis-packages-import-ms-excel-data-database/

Hope it helps.

Cyclopropane

Answer 3

I had a similar issue and found that it was much simpler to to get rid of the Excel files as soon as possible. As part of the first steps in my package I used Powershell to extract the data out of the Excel files into CSV files. My own Excel files were simple but here

Extract and convert all Excel worksheets into CSV files using PowerShell

is an excellent article by Tim Smith on extracting data from multiple Excel files and/or multiple sheets.

Once the Excel files have been converted to CSV the data import is much less complicated.

Beanfeast