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‘D-202599b$’ is not a valid name
I’m using SmartConnect 2018 (or SmartConnect 21.1.0.950 or earlier that still uses the Office Excel ODBC Drivers), and my map is using “Excel File” as a source (not Excel Folder Data Source).
Daily, the source Excel file is moved into the correct folder and with the correct file name, and the map normally works fine to read that source file – but once in a while opening or executing the map – SmartConnect throws the error:
Connection could not be validated
ERROR [42000] [Microsoft] [ODBC Excel Driver] ‘D-202599b$’ is not a valid name. Make sure that it does not include invalid characters or punctuation and that it is not too long.
To resolve this error, we manually create a new Excel file with the same name and copy & paste the data into the new file, but this is an inconvenient workaround process. What is the root cause of this error?
The underlying issue for these “problem” source files is that the sheet name is different than what is configured in the map source.
SmartConnect/ODBC can find the expected source Excel file, but the Excel sheet configured – ‘D-202599b’ doesn’t exist in the new file and the ODBC Query fails with this unexpected error.
Since there IS a sheet in the file with the correct data, instead of creating a new Excel file, you could just rename the existing sheet to be the expected name: D-202599b in this case, and it would work fine. It’s still inconvenient, but it’s quicker than creating a new file and copying the sheet data.
To avoid this issue in the future, you would want to investigate the source of the “sheet name” issue and determine whether it is a process issue on file creation or simple human error if it was manually entered and saved.
