I recently got a new laptop and had to go through the ritual of reinstalling all my programs and drivers. I sometimes work with SSIS locally to import data from Excel and occasionally do demos with Power BI where I read from an Access database so I needed to install the ACE OLE DB provider. If you try to do either of those things without the ACE OLE DB provider you will get a message like the one below.
The ‘Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0’ provider is not registered on the local machine.
I needed both the 32-bit and the 64-bit adapters to cover my various use cases. I started by installing the 64-bit Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable. If you have ever attempted this, you know there is a secret. You cannot install the 2010 Access database engine with a different processing architecture (bittedness) from your Office install (or install both versions of the 2010 Access database engine) without a workaround. If you try, you will get an error message.
There are two options for getting the other version installed.
Option A: Install the 2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components
The 2007 Access database engine can read the same format, but didn’t have a 64-bit install. It doesn’t have the check to see what other products are on your machine and can co-exist peacefully with the 64-bit 2010 Access engine.
Option B: Install from the Command Line and Use the Passive Switch
- Open the command prompt.
- Type the file path and file name for your Access Database Engine install file.
- Follow it with a space and then “/passive” and then hit Enter.
- Delete or rename the mso.dll registry value in the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\FilesPaths
I wrote up a document for this a while back for a client, but I can never remember where I put it. So I’m posting this on my blog to make this info easier to find for me as well as you.
