Connecting visual studio 2017 to 64-bit excel file

Question

Greetings dear members,

 

Can you please provide me with an advice on how to connect my c# application in visual studio 2017 to a 64-bit Excel file?

 

I get below error message when trying to do so:

 

microsoft.oledb.16.0 provider not registered

 

I tried installing Microsoft Access Database Engine 2016 Redistributable 32-bit version on the account that my visual studio application is running on x86 but couldn't because of below error message:

 

you cannot install the 32-bit version of Microsoft access database engine 2016 because you currently have 64-bit Office products installed

 

Appreciate your good support on this.

Regards,

Ali