>You're not alone. I've never found a 100% reliable workaround except to not use excel files.

Robert,

After a ton of searching I did manage to find a workaround. What you have to do is access the Disconnected Edit of the DTS package and modify the extended properties of the Excel OLEDB object to include "IMEX=1" at the end of the parameter list. This apparently tells the OLEDB provider to expect mixed data and not make assumptions. Once I made this modification, my data came over just fine.

I think this workaround was posted on www.sqlmag.com but I'm not too sure since I saved the link on my office machine. On Monday I'll try to repost the link for you.

Jon