title: SSIS Excel Import Forcing Incorrect Column Type
body: <p>I'm trying to import a spreadsheet to our database using SSIS.  For some reason SSIS wants to believe two of the columns are of type Double, when they contain character data.  I've tried remapping the columns to be nvarchar(255) but it still doesn't want to select the data it thinks is double, because there are characters in it.  If I try to edit the SSIS package and change the column types in the Excel Source, it won't let me change the type of the columns in the Error Output and gives me an error if the regular output and error output columns don't match.</p>
  
  <p>Why is SSIS insisting that these columns are Double? How can I force it to realize these are strings?  Why does everything from microsoft have to not quite work correctly?</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong> </p>
  
  <p>I found this: </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="https://support.microsoft.com/ar-sa/help/236605/prb-dts-wizard-may-not-detect-excel-column-type-for-mixed-data-in-sql" rel="noreferrer">PRB: DTS Wizard may not detect Excel column type for mixed data in SQL Server</a></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I sorted my data so that mixed data types would be at the top, and guess what: The problem <em>reversed</em>.  Instead of not importing character data, it stopped importing purely numeric data.  Apparently someone doesn't think 12345 can be represented as a string...</p>