What this boils down to is a data type problem. I'm not aware of another solution, but have you Googled it ? SSIS uses what it knows about Excel unless the spreadsheet itself can indicate otherwise, and from SSIS's point of view, an empty Excel column has a data length of 255 characters, and I'm not aware of any way to change that behavior. If you find another solution, please post it, as you won't be the only one that wants to know.