Custom File Extension for Microsoft Access Text Driver (*.txt, *.csv)

Question

I'm trying to use a custom file extension for the Microsoft Access Text Driver (*.txt, *.csv) driver.
I have updated the FileExtns registry to have my new extension.
When I issue the following it does not work.
select [NoName] 
from openrowset('MSDASQL'
           ,'Driver={Microsoft Access Text Driver (*.txt, *.csv)};
                DefaultDir=c:\filedir'
           ,'select * from "file.lst"')
If I make the file a .csv it works fine.  However, if it has an extension of not CSV or TXT (in this case .lst, which is in the registry setting) extension it throws the following error and cannot seem to find a solution to it. 
OLE DB provider "MSDASQL" for linked server "(null)" returned message "[Microsoft][ODBC Text Driver] Cannot update. Database or object is read-only.". Msg 7350, Level 16, State 2, Line 1 Cannot get the column information from
OLE DB provider "MSDASQL" for linked server "(null)".
In addition, (although I can probably find this elsewhere), I need to have the first line 'BLANK' so that it does not miss data (there is no header row).  Is there  a way to use OPENROWSET without BULK to basically include all rows as data?
Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi,
According to your description, I did a test with your script, and got the same message as your post. Usually, by default, the Microsoft Access Text Driver (*.txt, *.csv) supports the four extensions file, such as *.asc, *.csv, *.tab, *.txt. To solve this issue,
I recommend you try to save the LST file in the above format, then use OPENROESET to get data from the supported extensions file in SQL Server.
In addition, the
OPENROWSET function is mainly used to retrieve remote data from an OLEDB data source, when you use OPENROWSET without BULK, provider_name is a necessary parameter in the script. However, the OPENROWSET (BULK...) is mainly called from a SELECT…FROM clause
within an INSERT statement, when importing bulk data from a data file into SQL Server table. Thus if you need to import bulk data, you should use the basic  syntax: INSERT ... SELECT * FROM OPENROWSET(BULK...), also there are some alternatives, such as
BULK INSERT
and
BCP .
Thanks
Lydia Zhang