How to find out the reason for OLE provider permission on SQL Server?

Question

I installed Office 2010 64 bit on Windows 7 64 bit. There is a SQL Server 2008 installed on windows 7 too.

Then I try to use Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0 to access data from excel file with T-SQL.

I try T-SQL in SQL Server Mgmt Studio with following kind of query:

SELECT *
FROM OPENROWSET('Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0', 'Excel 12.0;Database=C:\Temp\book1.xlsx;', 'SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]')

If I start SQL Server Mgmt Studio with 'Run as Administrator', it is okay. I can access/insert data from/to the Excel file.

If I start Mgmt Studio directly (with my AD account), I will get error like:

OLE DB provider "Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0" for linked server "(null)" returned message "Unspecified error".
Msg 7303, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Cannot initialize the data source object of OLE DB provider "Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0" for linked server "(null)".

but actually, my account is also a admin account (it is in Local Administrator group and AD admin group).

Because I need to run T-SQL like OpenRowSet in code, not sure how to resolve this issue.

Looks like OpenRowSet for this case only okay for local administrator to run MSSM.

I try to run MSSM from another computer, and got same error as above.

Answer 1

Figure it out: login as sa resolve this problem.

Answer 2

Try putting your Excel file in a location that your user account has access to without requiring admin privileges.

Your user folder for instance would be a better choice. Windows will restrict access to these types of folders when running without admin privileges.