Microsoft Office 2000 Supported Data Formats and Installed OLE DB Providers
This content is no longer actively maintained. It is provided as is, for anyone who may still be using these technologies, with no warranties or claims of accuracy with regard to the most recent product version or service release.
Microsoft
January 1999
The data sources you need to work with in a typical corporate setting can take a dizzying variety of forms and storage formats, for example:
- Contact data in a Microsoft® Outlook® Address Book or Contacts folder
- Financial data in a Microsoft Excel workbook
- A list of products in a Microsoft Word table
- Customer addresses in a mail merge file
- Orders data in a Microsoft Access database
- Sales data in a Microsoft SQL Server™ database
- Data from other programs, such as dBASE, Paradox, or Lotus 1-2-3
- Data from a Web page, such as tables or lists
- Data from Web queries, such as current stock prices
- Data retrieved through a connection to a database on a mainframe server, or returned from a mainframe program as a text file.
As long as you have Office 2000 applications and the correct drivers, converters, or OLE DB providers installed, you can connect to, open, or import data in all of these formats and many others. By default, Office 2000 installs support for access to the following data formats:
| Data Source | Version or Format Supported |
|---|---|
| Access database (.mdb) | 1.x, 2.0, 7.0/95, 8.0/97, 9.0/2000 |
| SQL Server | 6.5 or 7.0 |
| Excel spreadsheets and workbooks | 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 7.0/95, 8.0/97, and 9.0/2000 |
| Microsoft Exchange | All versions |
| OLE DB providers | Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Microsoft Jet 4.0
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) Services (the provider used by ADO MD and PivotTable reports to access multi-dimensional data made available by using Microsoft SQL Server OLAP Services) Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Oracle Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Microsoft Indexing Service Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Microsoft Active Directory™ Service Microsoft Data Shaping Service for OLE DB (supports the creation of hierarchical [shaped] Recordset objects from one or more data providers) Microsoft OLE DB Remoting Provider (enables a client computer to invoke data providers on a remote computer) Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Internet Publishing (used to save files via HTTP to a Web server that is running Microsoft Internet Information Services) For more information about OLE DB providers, see Microsoft ActiveX® Data Objects (ADO) Help and the Universal Data Access Web site at www.microsoft.com/data/default.htm. |
| ODBC drivers | When linking from or importing to an Access database (.mdb):
SQL Server tables (SQL Server ODBC driver) FoxPro® tables (Microsoft FoxPro ODBC driver) Microsoft Access also installs additional ODBC drivers that can be used to access data from DAO or ADO code when you are using the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC:
However, the preferred method of accessing data in these formats is by using the Microsoft Jet 4.0 OLE DB Provider. |
| Microsoft FoxPro® | Visual FoxPro® 2.x, 3.0, 5.0, and 6.x through the Microsoft FoxPro ODBC driver |
| dBASE | III, III+, IV, and 5 — Export, import, or linking (read-only without Borland Database Engine. See note below.)
7 (Requires current Borland Database Engine. See note below.) |
| Paradox, Paradox for Windows | 3.x, 4.x, and 5.0 — Export, import, or linking (Read-only without Borland Database Engine. See note below.)
7 and 8 (Requires current Borland Database Engine. See note below.) |
| Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets | .wks, .wk1, .wk3, and .wk4 |
| Delimited text files | Most files with values separated by commas, tabs, or other characters. Must be in an MS-DOS® or Windows® ANSI text format. |
| Fixed-width text files | Most files with values arranged so that each field has a certain width (the value in each field is padded with spaces to a fixed-width). Must be in an MS-DOS or Windows ANSI text format. |
| HTML | 1.0 (lists only)
2.0, 3.x (lists and tables) |
Notes:
Your system may have other OLE DB providers installed by other applications or setup programs. To determine what OLE DB providers are installed on your system, open My Computer or Windows Explorer, right-click in a folder, and then click Microsoft Data Link on the New submenu. This will create a new Microsoft Data Link file, which is used to save OLE DB connection information to a file. Double-click the file to display the Data Link Properties dialog box, and then click the Provider tab to view the installed OLE DB providers. For information about how to use a Data Link file from ADO, see "Connecting to a Database by Using a Data Link File" in Chapter 14, "Working with the Data Access Components of an Office Solution" in the Microsoft Office 2000/Visual Basic® Programmer's Guide (Microsoft Press®, 1999).
The Data Link Properties dialog box is also available from within Access 2000: if you open an Access project file (ADP) and then click Connection on the File menu, and also if you are viewing a data access page in Design view, display the field list, right-click the database name, and then click Connection. However, when this dialog box is viewed within Access 2000, the Provider tab in the Data Link Properties dialog box doesn't show all installed OLE DB providers. For information about using ADO with OLE DB providers other than those installed by Microsoft Office 2000, see the documentation supplied with the provider or with the application that installed the provider.
Your system may have other ODBC drivers installed by other applications or setup programs. To determine what ODBC drivers are installed on your system, double-click ODBC (32bit) (in Windows 95 and 98) or ODBC (in Windows NT®) in the Control Panel, and then click the Drivers tab.
By default, the Microsoft Jet 4.0 database engine supports importing, exporting to, and linking to Paradox 3.x, 4.x, and 5.x and dBASE III, III+, IV, and 5 tables (if you link to these tables, the data in them will be read-only). Microsoft Jet 4.0 does not support Paradox 7 and 8 or dBASE 7 tables. For read/write access from Microsoft Jet to all versions of Paradox or dBASE tables, you must also have the Borland Database Engine (BDE) 4.x or later installed on your computer. If you don't have BDE 4.x or later installed, you can obtain it by installing dBASE 7, Paradox 7 and 8, or Delphi. If you own an older version of the BDE that doesn't support the Paradox 8 or dBASE 7 file formats, you can upgrade your engine from the Inprise (formerly named Borland) Web site at www.inprise.com/.
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