We applied a data viewer immediately after the excel data connector, and could see that the values are distorted coming out of the connector before being handed off to a derived column object prior to the destination table.

So, it seems the excel connector is causing the problem. We investigated the field definitions (meta-data) in the excel connector (advanced editor), and the fields are defined as string.

What we've also discovered, however, is that if a column in the spreadsheet only contains numeric values, then decimals will end up distorted in SSIS (e.g., 10.4 becomes 10.400000004). But, if we have a cell with text info along with numeric values in the same column, the numeric values will not be distorted. Apparently, one string value in a column forces SSIS to accept all values in a column as text, but if only numeric values exist then SSIS will change the decimal values (provided that the decimal value doesn't end with a 5 -- i.e., 10.5 remains as 10.5, 2.05 remains as 2.05 -- but any other ending decimal will distort in the package). Weird.

--Pete