title: Getting MS Office 2013 (32 bit) Excel and Access to connect to Oracle database when both 32 and 64 clients are installed
body: <p>I am having some issues with Microsoft Office products after installing both the 32 bit and 64 bit clients for Oracle 11gr2 on my machine. I'm currently running Windows 7 64 bit with Microsoft Office 32 bit.</p>
  
  <p>We are dependent on some 32 bit applications and are working with a team of people - most of whom have 32 bit OS machines, so I need to run Office 32 bit.</p>
  
  <p>Currently, I'm creating and maintaining some Excel macro-enabled workbooks that our staff uses to submit information to access databases. The access databases make connections to oracle using the sqora32.dll driver and the excel workbooks connect using oraclient11.dll. </p>
  
  <p>I recently got a build of ArcGIS Pro, which requires a 64 bit oracle client and have been testing it for use on our production floor. I thought I had successfully installed the 64 bit oracle instant client (I have the full administrator version of the 32 bit oracle client) because everything worked great. The rest of my 32 bit software connects fine. However, when I try to make an oracle connection through access, the driver fails or I get a kernelbase error and Access completely crashes.</p>
  
  <p>When I try the query through Excel vba, I get an error from the Oracle ODBC Driver. It says, Internal Error - unable to initialize NLS during driver load. My event log shows the oraclient11.dll failing. When I try connecting using the "Run as administrator" option, the applications don't completely crash, they just stop working.</p>
  
  <p>I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the 32 bit oracle client, setting oracle_home environment variable, a work-around using softlinks in c:\windows\system32 and changing the order of the entries in the PATH environment variable, and setting the NLS_LANG environment variable.</p>
  
  <p>I would really like to figure this out without having to find another machine to test Pro on. Can anyone help me out with this? Because my 32 bit software is connecting correctly, I think it has something to do with Office trying to use the 64 bit drivers, but I'm not an expert on this. So, I don't know. </p>
  
  <p>Any help would be very much appreciated. If this has been answered before, can you please provide a link? I've been searching this for most of last week through today and have been unable to find anything that addresses my particular issue.</p>