I have a process where I import an excel spreadsheet with two tabs and headers and it's a BEAR. It's just problem after problem. Two of my biggest issues:
1. File locking. It's like SSIS doesn't want to let go of the file and I'm constantly getting "file in use by another user" messages. This used to be taken care of by either shutting down BIDS and reopening OR creating a new sheet and deleting the one I was working with. The second method is obviously impractical but NEITHER is working today.
2. THere are very precise specs for this sheet and it's created by a human so I have to do all this work to make sure the user didn't mess it up. The problem is when I change the sheet to test for errors BIDS throws a fit talking about failed validation. I don't WANT the sheet to be validated before the process runs.
Everything is in a FOREACH loop as I have to look at several Excel files in a folder. The process should be robust enough to handle that but it seems like everytime I add complexity to the process the excel connection manager throws a fit.
I've done everything I can to make the process flexible and my package is riddled with more variables than I can count. Paths are vars. File names are vars. I don't know what else to do.
What do you have to do to avoid all these errors when working with excel?