Importing from Excel - non-numeric values are ignored

Question

I have code that imports from Excel sheets of a specified format. In one of the columns, most data is numeric, but non-numeric values are also present. The non-numeric value

Answer 1

By default Excel bases the data type for a column on the first 8 rows of data. To change this, you need to update the registry key:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Access Connect Engine\Engines\Excel

with the number of rows you want Excel to scan. Set the value to 0 to have it scan all the rows. Note that setting it to zero can slow the Excel loads down a bit, especially on large spreadsheets.

Also, if you are also using Excel 2003, you need to update a second registry key:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Excel