Missing Microsoft driver to access Excel data

[Joshua-Young]

My computer has Windows 11 Enterprise 23H2, Microsoft 365 Office x64 click-to-run, ArcGIS Pro 3.4.2, and ArcGIS Desktop 10.8.2 installed. According to the decision tree I should not have to install any other drivers. However, I have to install the MS Access Database Engine 2016 x64 driver to open Excel files in ArcGIS Pro 3.4. The MS 365 Access Runtime x64 driver does not work.

More annoying is I have to uninstall and reinstall the MS Access Database Engine 2016 x64 driver occasionally because the error "Required Microsoft driver is missing" starts popping up in ArcGIS Pro even though I have not changed anything.

Is anyone else experiencing these issues? Is it because I have ArcGIS Desktop installed on the computer?

[Robert_LeClair]

Hmmm...do you have the Microsoft .NET Desktop Runtime (version 8.0.2) 64-bit driver installed on your computer?  This blog article here lists out the steps to install the necessary drivers and how to get MS Excel to work in ArcGIS Pro.

[Joshua-Young]

Yes I have the Microsoft .NET 8 Desktop Runtime installed. I am on the latest version 8.0.12. I have read that blog post and the ArcGIS Pro help documentation. According to the decision tree I should not need any additional drivers, even then the MS Access 365 Runtime should work according to the tree as well but it does not. Only the MS Access Database Engine 2016 x64 works, but eventually it stops working until I uninstall and reinstall the driver.

[Joshua-Young]

I think I have figured out the issue. I just moved to a new computer and it have the same software deployed on it except I have not loaded ArcGIS for Desktop or the Access runtime. On this new computer I am running Microsoft 365 x64 and the latest .NET 8 runtime. I do not have any extra Access runtimes installed and I can open Excel files in ArcGIS Pro 3.4 as expected.

On my old computer I was having to reinstall the MS Access Database Engine 2106 x64 at least once a month. Without changing any software on that computer, I would get the driver not installed error eventually and a reinstall of that specific Access driver was the only way to fix the problem.

Moral of the story folks is stop using ArcMap 🙂