Problem:

Are you trying to import an Excel file into SQL Server using SQL Server Integration services…And ran into error that has words like “Non unicode” and “unicode”? Then this blog is for you.

Why does this error occur?

Well it turns out that things like SQL Server and Excel have encoding standards that they follow which provides them a way to process, exchange & store data. BUT turns out that SQL Server and Excel use different standards.

Solution:

So, the solution is simple right? Import the data from Excel into non-Unicode format because that’s what you need for SQL Server.

So how do you that? Between your Source and Destination tasks, include a task called “Data conversion” and do the following for all columns that have text:

And in the destination task, you’ll have to make sure that the mapping section using the new output aliases that you defined in the “data conversion” step.

Conclusion:

In this post, we learned about how to solve a common error that pops up when you try to import excel file to sql server using SSIS. Hope that helps.

Author: Paras Doshi