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Access 2010 - runtime error 3170 Could not find installable ISAM

Anonymous
2010-08-19T12:08:12+00:00

I am running Office 2010 under Windows XP SP3 and I am getting the above error while exporting data from Access to Excel via a VBA routine. It worked fine in Access 2000 but since upgrading to Access 2010, I have started to get the erro "Could not find installable ISAM".

I am using a statement that starts DoCmd.TransferSpreadsheet acExport, acSpreadsheetTypeExcel3

If I change it to acSpreadsheetTypeExcel5 (or later) then it works fine but 3 or 4 brings up the installable ISAm error.

Any help as to how to make 3 and 4 work would much appreciated.

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  1. Anonymous
    2010-09-16T21:02:02+00:00

    Hi Sue,

    You are receiving this error message because in order to export to the acSpreadsheetTypeExcel3 and acSpreadsheetTypeExcel4, you would need to have the correct ISAM on the machine.  My question would be, is there a reason you would want to export to these file formats? The reason I ask is because these are extremely old file formats. In order to get the correct ISAM, you would most likely need to install and old version of Office on the machine. The article below lists some of the acSpreadsheetType enumerations up through Office 2000, but you can see that the two you are referring to are from Excel 3.0 and Excel 4.0.

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb225982(office.12).aspx

    Best Regards,

    Nathan Ost

    Microsoft Online Community Support

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-10-24T22:55:06+00:00

    Hi Spalogicng,

    I wish I had a better answer for you, but the new versions of Access 2007 / 2010 (which make use of the ACE engine) are not able to save files to an Excel format that is older than Excel 5.0.  If you manually try to export an object (ex. table) from within Access 2007 or Access 2010, you will notice Excel 4.0 and earlier are not available options.  So when you run code that tries to export to this file format, the ACE driver is unable to do so and produces the error you are seeing.  If you have a need to write to these older Excel file format (and you very well may) then you will need to use an older version of Access to do so.  From what I can see, it looks like starting in Excel 2007 they also removed the functionality to save to the Excel 4.0 file format as documented in the following article:

    File formats that are supported in Excel - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/file-formats-that-are-supported-in-excel-HP010014103.aspx

    Best Regards,

    Nathan O.

    Microsoft Online Community Support

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  4. Anonymous
    2012-06-22T15:09:36+00:00

    With all due respect, this answer is annoying.

    Why do we want to export in these formats? Because we have some program that requires these formats.

    Install Office 2000? Can't be done - it's an unsupported program for which necessary installation updates are discontinued from Microsoft.

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