No ODBC Drivers available for Excel or Access in Windows 7 ?!

Anonymous
2009-10-08T06:27:39+00:00

No ODBC Drivers available for Excel or Access! Even after a complete new installation of Windows 7 and Office 2003 professional or Office 2007 professional on another computer. When I want to add a driver in the ODBC Data Source Administrator, the response is: "To install new drivers use the driver's setup program!"

In the ODBC Data Source Administrators Windows only the SQL-Native Client and SQL-Server, from Microsoft shows to be installed!

How to install these ODBC Drivers or how to go about it? Thanks a lot for your responses!

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2010-02-16T06:07:57+00:00

I think the answer is already here in this thread (but it's not, imo, the post marked as "Answer").

You need to use Windows 7 32-bit subsystem.  In particular, you need to use the ODBC control panel here:

c:\windows\sysWOW64\odbcad32.exe

At least in my case, that version (the 32 bit version) of the cpl did contain the Access (2003 in my case) ODBC driver. 

The 64 bit DLLs etc are in c:\windows\system32.  The 32 bit subsystem (so you can still run 32 bit apps on 64 bit Windows 7) is in c:\windows\sysWOW64.

I mean, that's very intuitive - right?

But I didn't post anything here until I could confirm that the 32 bit ODBC connection to Access was working (giving me the db's data).

Well what I'm trying to get to work goes through a bunch more complications: https://sourceforge.net/projects/mondrian/. Tomcat, mondrian, edits to config files to point things in the right direction, etc.

But given that it all now works, I'd say that the ODBC connection to the Access db must be working (I'm getting its data in the web interface to Mondrian).  Mondrian is an open-source (sourceforge) OLAP project.  It's also bundled with other BI stuff at: www.pentaho.com

The default data store for Mondrian on Windows is Access.

So the key is to use c:\windows\sysWOW64\odbcad32.exe

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Anonymous
2012-07-03T21:51:52+00:00

The following KB article provides additional information on how to create DSNs that make use of Office ODBC drivers on 64 bit versions of Windows.

2721825          Unable to create DSN for Microsoft Office System Driver on 64-bit versions of Windows

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2721825/EN-US

Hopefully this helps.

Best Regards,

Nathan O.

Microsoft Online Community Support

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-04-05T02:39:12+00:00

    This SOLUTION  is AWESOME and actually works best!!! All the necessary drivers will show up!!!!! yea!!!! I am running Access 2007 on a Windows 7 x64 machine BTW, so it works!

    "I've worked my way through this entire thread and haven't managed to sort out the main problem: Excel / Access drivers not visible/available in Win7 x64.

    However, I've just discovered a workaround which promises success! The secret is to trick the 64bit system into using the 32bit drivers (which can be found using the odbcad32.exe solution elsewhere in this thread). The way to do this is to go into your control panel and amend the properties for ODBC Data Sources shortcut.

    Steps are as follows:

    • open Control Panel
    • Go into Administrative Tools
    • right click on Data Sources (ODBC)
    • click on Properties
    • on the shortcut tab, change the 'Target' to %windir%\syswow64\odbcad32.exe and the 'Start in' to %windir%\syswow64
    • Apply, and click OK

    Now, when you try to add a data source from anywhere, whether its Excel or Access, the 32bit Data Source dialog box is called from the application. This seems to be the best way around the problem."

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-03-29T05:18:40+00:00

    jgareau, you nailed it, thanks!

    just to recap, it's a 2 step process:

    1. download and install mdac 2.8 (google it)
    2. run c:\windows\syswow64\odbcad32.exe

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-03-21T00:19:57+00:00

    This link helped me.  I made a shortcut on the desktop with C:\windows\SysWOW64\odbcsys32.exe as the target.  Then, instead of going through Administrative Tools to  ODBC item, I just launch it from the desktop.  Voila!  The missing Access ODBC choice is there under both user and system DSN.  It seems they didn't bother to make 64-bit drivers for these in Windows 7, which is why they don't show up when you go the normal route to the ODBC menu.   Not very professional...I wonder if they know how many peoples' lives they have made miserable troubleshooting this.

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