Additional columns in an Excel copy activity format error

Question

I'm trying to run a copy activity of an Excel file into a database table, including additional columns of timestamps and a test data flag. I get the following error when including the additional columns:

errorcode=usererrorinvalidplugintype,'type=microsoft.datatransfer.common.shared.pluginnotregisteredexception,message=invalid type 'excelformat' is provided in 'format'. please correct the type in payload and retry.,source=microsoft.datatransfer.clientlibrary,'154461-example-copy-activity-format-error.txt

Example copy activity code.

I need to include additional columns to include metadata on the data in the database. If I do not include additional columns and create a table in this activity run, I can insert the data successfully. How can I ingest the data from Excel files with the additional columns?

Answer 1

Hi @Iwan ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum and thanks for your query.

I just tried adding additional column to an excel file data and wrote it to a file store using ADF copy activity and I don't see any issues.

The data copied successfully without any issues in the sink file store.

Could you please retry again and see if you observe the same behavior. Also I feel like the error message is inappropriate to the situation.
If you still see the same issue, could you please try testing copying excel file data with additional columns to a file store and see if it work in that scenario? The reason I would want to check this is to understand if it something related to SQL dataset or Excel dataset.

I also suspect it could be an issue with the mapping from additional columns in source to sink data types. I would recommend double check the data types for additional column columns in source and respective sink columns.

Hope this info helps. Do let us know how it goes.

Thank you