CTRL - R

Seems like Mike has the info on whats going wrong and how long it will be before its fixed.

There are several ways but the most commonly used approach of using linked servers hits ona  1000 row limit in the AD OLE DB Provider, here is a solution using SQL CLR, I have not tried it but if it works as advertised then it should help, beware it does use SQLCLR.    

This question has been coming up a lot internally lately, short answer is: Data Source=D:\Test.xlsx;Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0; Extended Properties=Excel 8.0; Note that the provider is no longer JET but the new data engine from the office team and that you need to set the extended property for the right version. However one of the answers ...

Linchi continues his excellent series analyzing the impact of new system features in SQL Server 2005 here.

Soon according to Paul.