PowerCenter treats a Microsoft Excel source as a relational database, not a flat file. Like relational sources, the Designer uses ODBC to import a Microsoft Excel source. You do not need database permissions to import Microsoft Excel sources.
Complete the following tasks before you import an Excel source definition:
Install the Microsoft Excel ODBC driver on the system.
Create a Microsoft Excel ODBC data source for each source file in the ODBC Data Source Administrator.
Prepare Microsoft Excel spreadsheets by defining ranges and formatting columns of numeric data.