Still having issues.

1) Open Visual Studio/BIDS and open project. Open Data Flow tab and right click on Source-Sheet1$ object

2) Click on Show Advanced Editor

3) Select Input and Output Properties

4) Open Excel Source Output -> External Columns

5) Find Zip Code field and looked at Data Type Properties

Date Type = double-precision float [DT_R8]

6) Changed data type to Unicode String [DT_WSTR] with length of 15

7) Repeated same data type change for Excel Internal Columns for same Zip Code field.

8) Saved changes

See attached JPG file

9) Executed Package

10) Get Package Validation Error: Error at Data Flow Task [Source-Sheet1$[1]]: The output column "ZipCode" (61) on the error output has properties that do not match the properties of its corresponding data source column.

VS_NeedsNewMetaData

See 2nd attached JPG file with error message details.

11) Verified that Excel Internal and External Columns (Zip Code field) had same datatype = Unicode String [DT_WSTR] with length of 15.

12) Edited Output Columns -> Zip Code field and changed DataType to Unicode String [DT_WSTR] with length of 15. Get error message immediately that Property value is not valid. Click on Details button and get message of:

Error at Data Flow Task [Source - Sheet1$ [1]]: The data type for "output "Excel Source Error Output" (10)" cannot be modified in the error "output column "ZipCode" (61)".

Error at Data Flow Task [Source - Sheet1$ [1]]: Failed to set property "DataType" on "output column "ZipCode" (61)".

So you can change the datatype for Internal and External Columns but can't change the Output columns. The error/validation messages seem to state that all 3 types of columns need to be changed.

What am I doing wrong?

I just want to get the zip code field to be a non-numeric datatype.