BUG: Adding a DSN With Microsoft Text Driver May Fail

When you try to create a data source name (DSN) with the Microsoft Text Driver on a computer that has MDAC 2.1 or later installed, you may get the following error:

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

This behavior is inconsistent. The error may occur when you try to create a USER DSN and then it might occur when you to create a System DSN.

The error only occurs when adding a DSN.

NOTE: You can ignore the error and save the DSN. Then you can reconfigure the same DSN without getting an error.

Steps to Reproduce the Error

1. Install MDAC 2.1 or later.
2. Create a text file named TestDSN.csv using Notepad. Enter "1,2,3,4" in the text file and then save the file. The file name and content are not important.
3. Open Control Panel and click the ODBC icon and add a User or System DSN.
4. Select "Microsoft Text Driver (*.txt;*.csv)".
5. Enter a data source name and clear the "Use Current Directory" check box.
6. Select the directory where the TestDSN.csv file was saved as the current directory.
7. Click the Option button.
8. Click Define Format.
9. Select the file TestDSN.csv.
10. Select the CSV format (since the file you created is CSV delimited, otherwise it is not important).
11. Click Guess, which will give the field names, and so forth.
12. Next, click OK. You will then get the error:
    Failed to save table attributes of (null) into (null).