Q. Why can't I use OLE DB or ODBC data connections on my 64-bit machine?

A. Some OLE DB and ODBC drivers are available for 64-bit versions of Windows, however Microsoft's Jet drivers for connecting to Microsoft Excel and Access data source files are not. [1]

If you are trying to use these drivers or other OLE DB/ODBC drivers, look for 64-bit versions of them and ensure they are installed if available. For example, there are 64-bit OLE DB drivers for Microsoft SQL Server available here. Another option is to find a .NET-native provider to connect to your data source, which will be able to execute on 32-bit and 64-bit machines.

If you are using Dundas products for SharePoint, Excel Services provides a 64-bit-compatible (and more intuitive) way to access Excel data and this is one of the options in our data connection wizard. (Excel Services is provided in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise.)

If you are using Dundas Map on a 64-bit version of Windows, ESRI shapefiles cannot be loaded from a file in this environment. To avoid this issue, you can use Dundas Map on another machine to load your shapefile and make some settings changes if desired, save your map to an XML file, and load this file instead on your 64-bit machine. See "Loading and Saving Maps" in our Map documentation for details.