# Excel

This connector allows you to connect to Excel files.

NOTE: An Excel file is a Workbook. When you connect, each spreadsheet in the workbook appears as a separate table. You can use SQL SELECT statements to join spreadsheets together if required, but see the notes on Using SQL with Excel.

Path to file - This is the full path to the file. May be a UNC path.

Data Typing Mode - When data is read from an Excel spreadsheet, the driver must decide what data type it is. the default mode is to look at the first eight rows and (for each column) make a decision based on the majority; all subsequent rows are forced to the selected data type. this can mean that if (for example) a column has text in the first five rows but numbers after that, all the numbers will disappear.

The alternative is to force the data to be read as text always; however, any cells with more than 255 characters will be truncated.

Remove characters > 255 - When writing to an Excel spreadsheet, selecting this option will strip any characters with an ASCII value greater than 255. This can avoid some problems with spreadsheets.