Unable to access Excel Spreadsheets from ArcGIS Pro 3.4

[bcombs18]

I recently upgraded my users to ArcGIS Pro 3.4. A handful of them use Excel sheets. In the past, we've just needed to install the Access Database Engine 2016 (32-bit), however, it appears that ArcGIS Pro 3.4 requires the MS 365 Access Runtime driver along side the Access Database Engine 2016.

I have followed the flow chart from the "Guide to connecting Excel files in ArcGIS Pro" and am having some issues.

To start, here's the breakdown of my environment:

• Windows 10 and 11 Pro
• ArcGIS 3.4
• Microsoft Office 365 32-bit Click-to-Run

Following the flow chart from the guide, I should need to install both MS 365 Access Runtime (32-bit) and MS Access Database Engine 2016 (32-bit). Then the flow chart seems to indicate that I also need to install MS 365 Access Runtime (64-bit) and MS Access Database Engine (64-bit) silently.

As far as I understand, the 64-bit versions cannot be install with a 32-bit Office installation. The guide seems to indicate that installing these silently gets around that restriction, but I am having no luck getting the 64-bit versions to install.

The guide says to install MS 365 Access Runtime (64-bit) with the following command: "OfficeSetup.exe /quiet". However the newer OfficeSetup.exe installers do not make use of the /quiet flag, and instead require a configuration.xml file to install silently. I've created and tested this, it works great for the 32-bit version, but does not get around the version restriction for the 64-bit version.

Is there something I'm misunderstanding about what I need to do to make importing Excel sheet work again in version 3.4 with my environment? Has anyone else had luck making Excel sheets work with a 32-bit Click-to-Run Office installation? Any ideas, workarounds, general input is very appreciated!

Thanks!

Link to Guide mentioned above. 

[ZeMadmapper]

Yikes

[BrendanMadden]

I am having the same problem, with essentially the same setup as @bcombs18. I'm stuck at silently installing the MS 365 Access Runtime (64-bit) ["OfficeSetup.exe"] not working with the /quiet option. My PC is on Windows 11, if that makes a difference. I was able to get Excel spreadsheets to open in ArcGIS Pro without the Access Runtime 64-bit, but I lost the ability to open Access databases. I can do one or the other, but not both. The problem is I need to be able to do both. I can work around this by converting to .csv files most of the time, but this doesn't work for everything.

[BrendanMadden]

@bcombs18 - I found a solution for this problem, though it's probably not officially supported and may not work in the future. On my old work PC that I am in the process of replacing, I found a copy of the Access Database Engine 2010 64-bit software that I was able to install silently on my new PC alongside the 32-bit version and can now use both Access and open Excel spreadsheets in ArcGIS Pro 3.4. The 2010 version is no longer available for download so I was lucky I had it hanging around in my old Downloads folder still. I'm happy this will work for now at least. Let me know if you're interested in trying this method. Hopefully we hear back soon on making the new supported version of this work.