5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…

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SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQL Server Using Bulk Insert – Load Comma Delimited File Into
SQL Server
February 6, 2008 by pinaldave

This is very common request recently – How to import CSV file into SQL Server? How to load CSV file into SQL Server Database Table? How to load comma delimited file into
SQL Server? Let us see the solution in quick steps.

CSV stands for Comma Separated Values, sometimes also called Comma Delimited Values.

Create TestTable
USE TestData
GO
CREATE TABLE CSVTest
(ID INT,
FirstName VARCHAR(40),
LastName VARCHAR(40),
BirthDate SMALLDATETIME)
GO

Create CSV file in drive C: with name csvtest.txt with following content. The location of the file is C:\csvtest.txt

1,James,Smith,19750101

2,Meggie,Smith,19790122

3,Robert,Smith,20071101

4,Alex,Smith,20040202

Now run following script to load all the data from CSV to database table. If there is any error in any row it will be not inserted but other rows will be inserted.
BULK
INSERT CSVTest
FROM 'c:\csvtest.txt'
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ',',

…sqlauthority.com/…/sql-server-import… 1/94
5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
)
GO
--Check the content of the table.
SELECT *
FROM CSVTest
GO
--Drop the table to clean up database.
SELECT *
FROM CSVTest
GO

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)

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Posted in Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology | Tagged CSV | 515 Comments

Like One blogger likes this post.

515 Responses

1. on February 7, 2008 at 2:10 pm | Reply rana

Good one.

It solves my problem.

Keep it up. Pinal.

on January 29, 2010 at 10:31 am | Reply amit

Can i insert current datetime using CSV .

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5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…

on March 11, 2010 at 11:09 am | Reply Rajesh

Can anybody help me

Export excel sheet to SQL Database(Remote Server)

insert INTO tbL_excel

SELECT *
FROM OPENROWSET(‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′,
‘Excel 8.0;Database=\\pc31\C\Testexcel.xls’,
‘SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]‘)

on August 31, 2010 at 10:30 pm | Reply pakisboy

rajesh u have to use import export wizard

on September 21, 2010 at 11:43 am | Reply Vijay Dahite

Hi Rajesh,

perform following steps:

1. open your excel file.

2. save file as [name].csv
3.execute the sql statement given by pinal.

on September 29, 2010 at 11:34 am | Reply Vishnu Prasad Manoharan

Dear Rajesh,

insert INTO tbL_excel

SELECT *
FROM OPENROWSET(‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′,
‘Excel 8.0;Database=\\pc31\C\Testexcel.xls’,
‘SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]‘)

The above query posted by you is having a small mistake and the query follows:

SELECT * INTO TBL_EXCEL

OPENROWSET(‘MSDASQL’, ‘DRIVER ={Microsoft Excel Driver (*.xls)}’, ‘DBQ = PATH_NAME’,
‘SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]‘)

on February 4, 2011 at 2:19 am | Reply Alexandre JR

Try to change “\\pc31\C” by the drive and folder of your server location.

2. on February 7, 2008 at 8:04 pm | Reply Alireza

Thanks for your great share.

3. on February 7, 2008 at 8:38 pm | Reply Branden

How about csv files that have double quotes? Seems like a formatfile will be needed when using BULK INSERT. Would like to see if you have another approach.

on July 2, 2010 at 5:10 pm | Reply Bhuavna

bulk insert
from

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5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…
with
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘”,”‘,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘”‘
)

also make sure you dont have an extra carriage return is at the end of the file

since im replying for a post that is more then 3 yrs old, somebody mught benefit from this reply

Regards,
Bhuvana

on November 8, 2010 at 11:10 pm | Reply Todd Morrow

Yes this helped. Thanks for posting.

4. on February 8, 2008 at 5:56 pm | Reply Dnyanesh

Hi all,

I am getting following error in the bulk insert of the .csv file.

The bulk load failed. The column is too long in the data file for row 1, column 25. Verify that the field terminator and row terminator are specified correctly.

Please help me.

Dnyanesh

5. on February 9, 2008 at 2:25 am | Reply Dragan

What would be the process to import a CSV file into existing MS SQL database tables? I have a CSV file that contains data which is comma delimited that I need to import
into a SQL production database which is being used by another application. The CSV file contains a list of defects that basically needs to be imported into the Defects table in
our SQL database.

Thanks for all of your help in advanced.. This is a really good website to obtain SQL information.

6. on February 11, 2008 at 1:39 pm | Reply vonPryz

I had some problems with bulk inserts too. The data set to insert was somewhat large, around a few hundred megabytes, resulted in some two million rows. Not all data was
required, so massaging was needed.

So I wrote a smallish C#/.NET program that reads the input file in chunks of 25,000 rows, picked appropriate rows with regular expression matching and sent results to DB.

String manipulation is so much more easy in about any general-purpose programming language.

Key components: DataTable for data-to-be-inserted and SqlBulkCopy to do the actual copying.

@Dnyanesh: Your input data is likely to not have correct column/row separator characters.

I’d guess you have a line-break as row separator. If that is the case, the problem is, in Windows CR LF (0x0a 0x0d) is often used, in other systems only CR or LF are used.
Check your separator characters. Use a hex editor to be sure.

@Branden: Just use sed to change quote characters :-)

@Dragan: Use Import/Export wizard or write a program to do inserting like I did.

7. on February 13, 2008 at 1:39 am | Reply Scott

A CSV file can contain commas in a field ‘,’ as well as be used as the delimiter. How does this Bulk import handle these circumstances? Does it handle all the CSV standards?

@vonPryz: See Example Below (don’t just replace quotes)

Example CSV lines with format (Name,Address):

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5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…
Scott,123 Main St
Mike,”456 2nd St, Apt 5″

More on CSV files can be found here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values

on October 15, 2010 at 9:00 am | Reply David

Hi Scott – did you get an answer to this question? I have a similar situation where some of the data has ” ” around it while other data does not.

8. on February 13, 2008 at 12:02 pm | Reply Kumar

Thanks for all in this forum,

I have used BULK INSERT command load CSV file into existing SQL server table. It is executing sucessfully withougt giving any error but only concern is it is inserting every
alternative records.
BULK INSERT EDFE_Trg.dbo.[tblCCodeMast]
FROM ‘c:\temp\Catalogue.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO
this is my code. Please help me on this.
With advance thanks…
kumar

on March 23, 2010 at 12:08 pm | Reply Madhivanan

How did you know it is inserting alternate records?

Run this before and after import to see if recordcount is correct

select count(*) from table

9. on February 18, 2008 at 9:58 pm | Reply Hassan tga

thank you very mush for this,

it willy helped me.

regards

10. on February 20, 2008 at 6:56 am | Reply Martin

Hi,

I need to import a significant number of Latitude and Longitude data into one of my SQL tables… (running SQL2005)

Tried the above, but got you do not have permission to use Bulk Load statement.

Logged in as administrator… any thoughts?

Martin

11. on February 20, 2008 at 8:56 am | Reply Martin

ok…solced that issue…logged in using Windows Authentication, and gave my SQL admin the rights for BULKINSERT

SQL code now runs with no errors… and if I do a select * from the table, it shows the field headings, but no data … 0 rows affected

Any thoughts? This one has me stumped… no error message leaves me nowhere to look

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Cheers

12. on February 21, 2008 at 2:55 pm | Reply Siva

Hi Pinal

Please help me
Iam using sql server 2005,..I want to do a similar operation..

I have my file in C:\Test.txt. Also I create the table in my DB.

BULK INSERT CSVTest

FROM ‘c:\Test.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘\t’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

When I run this …am getting error saying…

Cannot bulk load. The file “c:\Test.txt” does not exist.

infact, I have the file given in the path.

Thanks,

on January 12, 2010 at 7:30 pm | Reply Kapil

Might be this only work when the database is local on the system that contain the text file.

on August 26, 2010 at 10:35 pm | Reply pianohc

the path should be UNC path like:

‘\\server’s name\XXX\csv.txt’

instead of ‘c:\Test.txt’

on December 17, 2010 at 4:58 pm | Reply Sweety

Make sure the given path & file name are correct or not. because i got the same error when i run that query. Then i change the file name as same as in the script
(csvtest.txt)
and stored it in the same path.

13. on February 23, 2008 at 9:37 pm | Reply John Doe

@Siva
SQL Sever 2005 must have access rights to the file (“c:\Test.txt”). Make sure the file is accessible for the database account

14. on February 27, 2008 at 11:37 am | Reply Sumit pal Singh

How to import data from a Excel Sheet using “Bulk Insert” command?

on March 26, 2010 at 12:02 pm | Reply Madhivanan

You need OPENROWSET function

Refer this post

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5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…
http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=49926

15. on February 28, 2008 at 6:38 pm | Reply JB

Will this method work for SQL Server Compact Edition?

16. on February 29, 2008 at 9:21 pm | Reply Abdul

Panel, Excellent Job, Congrats.

Please help me for this….
I have on line in .csv file as …
863807129312681,G052360310001

I want to do BulkInsert as….

Column1: 86380 71293 12681
Column2: ;
Columns3: G052360310001

please help me…..

17. on March 3, 2008 at 5:22 pm | Reply ViSheN

Great stuff, codes perfect, helped me alot lot

18. on March 4, 2008 at 4:01 pm | Reply sabarish

hai dave,
i want to iterate the record from collection of records without using cursors. how can i achieve this

19. on March 5, 2008 at 9:30 pm | Reply Confused

Hi,

What if my Table has 4 Columns and the CSV file has 3 Columns and I wanna the last column of the Table to be a variable?

20. on March 6, 2008 at 12:25 pm | Reply Jerome

THANK YOU!

21. on March 7, 2008 at 5:05 am | Reply LineByLine

Hey there, thanks for the great article.

I have one question, is it possible to read a CSV file line-by-line without using bulk import?

It’s just more convenient in my situation so please let me know if its a possible option,

Thank you

on March 15, 2010 at 1:02 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Can you give us more informations on what you are trying to do?

22. on March 9, 2008 at 12:55 am | Reply Abdul

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5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…
Please help me for this….
I have on line in .csv file as …
863807129312681,G052360310001

I want to do BulkInsert as….

Column1: 86380 71293 12681
Column2: ;
Columns3: G052360310001

please help me…..

on March 17, 2010 at 1:33 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Do you mean to skip column 2?

Refer this post
http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan/archive/2010/03/17/bulk-insert-to-table-with-specific-columns.aspx

23. on March 10, 2008 at 6:28 pm | Reply anusha

i want to get data from CSv file into sql database.suppose the CSV file changes that is updations will be done on CSV file for every 8 hrs or 4 hrs like that.Then i have to get
the updations reflected in my sql datbase also. Then how it is possible ????

24. on March 11, 2008 at 7:41 am | Reply different scott

you never answered scott’ question above. thoughts?

his question:

A CSV file can contain commas in a field ‘,’ as well as be used as the delimiter. How does this Bulk import handle these circumstances? Does it handle all the CSV standards?

@vonPryz: See Example Below (don’t just replace quotes)

Example CSV lines with format (Name,Address):

Scott,123 Main St
Mike,”456 2nd St, Apt 5″

25. on March 14, 2008 at 2:22 pm | Reply Krish

I am using SQL Express Edition to Run the code..

But I am Getting the error
Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 3
Incorrect syntax near ‘‘’.
Msg 319, Level 15, State 1, Line 4
Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘with’. If this statement is a common table expression or an xmlnamespaces clause, the previous statement must be terminated with a
semicolon.

Please help me to resolve the error…

Thanx in advance…

on March 15, 2010 at 1:04 pm | Reply Madhivanan

It is becuase single quotes are represented differently in this site. Change it single quote and try

26. on March 17, 2008 at 7:58 pm | Reply Scott Kellman

What happens to the rows that fail? I wuold like to save those off to allow the user to fix them….

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5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…

on March 15, 2010 at 1:05 pm | Reply Madhivanan

You can make use the method that is explained in this link
http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan/archive/2009/10/19/finding-out-problematic-data-in-bulk-insert-data-truncation-error.aspx

27. on March 17, 2008 at 9:25 pm | Reply Lakeside

to different scott

I have fields with commas as well. Convert the csv (using Excel) to a tab-delimited text file and then use the ‘\t’ delimiter instead.

to Abdul

I have used Excel to break longer fixed-length columns into smaller columns. I believe this will help you. Open the file in Excel, add two columns after the first column. use the
Data –> Text to Columns option. you can break the data into additional columns and then save the file back out to a csv.

on September 20, 2010 at 2:39 pm | Reply Tonys.K.Cherian

i have one csv file in that file the data is like

CATEGORY,10,10,10,10
ERP Code,Creation date (DD/MM/YYYY),NoProgram,Contract number,Contract position
920,4/8/2010,971156,12914,1
LINES,10,10,10,10
Date (DD/MM/YYYY),Quantity,Horizon,10,10
16/09/2010,20,Frozen,10,10
28/10/2010,20,Flexible,10,10
23/12/2010,11,Flexible,10,10
27/01/2011,13,Flexible,10,10
24/02/2011,14,Flexible,10,10
24/03/2011,19,Flexible,10,10
28/04/2011,13,Flexible,10,10
26/05/2011,13,Flexible,10,10
23/06/2011,16,Flexible,10,10
28/07/2011,23,Flexible,10,10
1/8/2011,13,Forecast,10,10
29/08/2011,7,Forecast,10,10
24/10/2011,19,Forecast,10,10
21/11/2011,14,Forecast,10,10
19/12/2011,13,Forecast,10,10
16/01/2012,18,Forecast,10,10
13/02/2012,12,Forecast,10,10
12/3/2012,12,Forecast,10,10
9/4/2012,19,Forecast,10,10
7/5/2012,16,Forecast,10,10
4/6/2012,14,Forecast,10,10
2/7/2012,17,Forecast,10,10
30/07/2012,12,Forecast,10,10
24/09/2012,8,Forecast,10,10
like this give a solution to insert this one to one sql table
i tryed by using bulk insert but it gettting updated with one column i neeed field by field
plse help me

28. on March 18, 2008 at 5:14 am | Reply Dave M

I have over 1,200 separate csv files to import and have two issues where I could use some help.

First, all of the files contain date fields but they are in the standard MM/DD/YYYY format. Is there a way to import them and then change them to an acceptable format for
SQL Server?

Next, each file name is unique and I have created a temporary table that has the directory and file name. Is it possible to nest a query something like this:

BULK INSERT MyTable

FROM (Select FileName from Files;)
WITH
(

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5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

29. on March 18, 2008 at 8:25 am | Reply Dave M

As an addendum, I discovered that some columns are in scientific notation so I need to change all numeric columns in the CSVs to be numeric with 6 decimal

30. on March 21, 2008 at 9:02 am | Reply Dave M

Did it. I used a combination of tools:

1. Lots of brute force – over 20 hours formatting, saving and converting the data. There has to be a more elegant solution but I couldn’t find it.

2. Excel 2007 because it can open a csv file that has over 200,000 rows. I loaded 25 files at a time into a worksheet (max of computer resources), reformatted the columns in
bulk and used a nifty VBA script to write each worksheet out to a separate csv with the name of the worksheet.

3. Found a great procedure that uses XP_CMDSHELL and the BCP utility in SQL 2005 that loads all files located in a specified directory. Loaded over 1,300 files in less than
30 minutes.

Now daily maintenance is loading one file a day.

D.

31. on March 27, 2008 at 7:03 pm | Reply ali

im getting the foll err can u help

ulk Insert fails. Column is too long in the data file for row 1, column 1. Make sure the field terminator and row terminator are specified correctly.

on March 23, 2010 at 7:46 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Check the length of the first column of the table

You need to increase it as the incoming data length is more than column’s length

32. on April 1, 2008 at 7:46 pm | Reply Dave B

Hi,
Does BULK INSERTing into an existing table that has an index on it take longer than inserting into an existing table without an index?

Cheers

on March 12, 2010 at 8:14 pm | Reply Madhivanan

If the table has clustered index, it may take more time to import

33. on April 2, 2008 at 12:17 pm | Reply Puneet Narang

Hi Pinal,

I was wondering how will i insert thousands of row from excel sheet.
But I converted the file to csv (comma seperate file ) and then usiing your bulk import statement i created all of my rows into my Table.

This was really wonderful

Thanks,
Keep it up

Happy Coding!!!

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Puneet

34. on April 2, 2008 at 8:52 pm | Reply George

I’m doing exactly what is said above but when I try the
BULK
INSERT CSVTest
FROM ‘c:\csvtest.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

I’m recieving the following error??? I was wondering could someone help me with this or is it just some tiny error that I can’t see, help would be really appreciated!!

Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 3

Incorrect syntax near ‘‘’.
Msg 319, Level 15, State 1, Line 4
Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘with’. If this statement is a common table expression or an xmlnamespaces clause, the previous statement must be terminated with a
semicolon.

on March 12, 2010 at 8:17 pm | Reply Madhivanan

It is because single quotes are represented differently in this blog. Change them to single quotes and try

35. on April 2, 2008 at 9:43 pm | Reply Sheldon

Hi,

I was using BULK insert to import a csv file to a database table(following the original example by Pinaldave in the beginning of this email stream), but got errors. I have granted
“Everyone” full control to this file.

Thanks so much,

Sheldon

============================================

BULK INSERT dbo.CSVTest

FROM ‘c:\csvtest.csv’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

Msg 4860, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Cannot bulk load. The file “c:\csvtest.csv” does not exist.

on January 23, 2010 at 5:11 pm | Reply Ahmad Elayyan

please try to change the data-type of the destinations column.

regards,
Ahmad Elayyan

on March 12, 2010 at 8:18 pm | Reply Madhivanan

The file should exists in the server and not in your system

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36. on April 3, 2008 at 2:30 am | Reply pronnie

i have a text file that is not comma or tab delimited. the data needs to be separated using fixed width counts. ie: characters 1-3 go into column1. characters 4-12 go into column
2 and so on. can this method be adapted to handle pos statements?

37. on April 5, 2008 at 3:35 pm | Reply megha

Hi,
I Just want to Thank’s for this Code realy help me a lot.

and i want to how to inport a .csv file through imprt command.

38. on April 7, 2008 at 5:04 am | Reply alaxi

I ran code in sql 2000 worked fine. During cut and paste it has problem with ‘ ‘. I had to re-enter from my keyboard. Also like to suggest for those it doesn’t run, please name
extension .csv in than .txt for sql 2000.

39. on April 7, 2008 at 5:18 am | Reply Navalkishore Arya

Thanks it works!

Also just wanted to point out that the query you said uses ” ` ” instead of ” ‘ ” shouldn’t you change it?

40. on April 8, 2008 at 12:56 pm | Reply nur

Hi Pinal

Please help me
Iam using sql server 2000,..I want to do a similar operation..

I have my file in C:\Test.txt. Also I create the table in my DB.

BULK INSERT CSVTest

FROM ‘c:\Test.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘\t’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

When I run this …am getting error saying…

Cannot bulk load. The file “c:\Test.txt” does not exist.

infact, I have the file given in the path.

Thanks,

on March 12, 2010 at 8:32 pm | Reply Madhivanan

As I replied to other person, the file should exists in the server and not in your system

41. on April 12, 2008 at 11:00 am | Reply Waseem

What is the Max size that SQL server can read and insert into database table? Please help me for this because i am inserting up to 4MB file into a table using .NET code, it is
not inserting records in the table. Up to 3 MB files are inserting into the table.

Thanks

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42. on April 18, 2008 at 4:29 pm | Reply Rahul

Hi,
i have to upload data from a fixed width text file to sql server 2000.

data in file is like rahulankilprogrammer

we have two create a table of three column fname,lname and job, first 5 letters will go in first column , next 5 letters will go in second and than next 10 letters will go in third
column .

please help me to do this ,as it is not a CSV file.

this file come to us on daily basis, daily we hav to upload it on sql server.

pls pls help me out ASAP

ThanX in advance

43. on April 25, 2008 at 8:42 pm | Reply Teo

Hello,
I have a proplem with BULK in stored procedures.
I want to do a BULK from a file (.CSV) wich name changes every day. So I have an attribute “@FileName” in order to change the name every single day.

BULK INSERT dbo.TableName

FROM @FileName
WITH ( FIELDTERMINATOR=’;', ROWTERMINATOR=’\\n’)

But it gives me an error telling that there’s a sintax error after FROM. I have tried with all kind of punctuation (‘,”,`,´,+)

It would be gratefull if some one could answer to my question.

Thanks in advance

on March 15, 2010 at 12:59 pm | Reply Madhivanan

declare @sql varchar(1000)

set @sq=’BULK INSERT dbo.TableName
FROM ”’+@FileName+”’
WITH ( FIELDTERMINATOR=’’;”, ROWTERMINATOR=’’\\n’’)’
EXEC(@sql)

44. on April 29, 2008 at 5:40 pm | Reply Vijay Ananth P

Hi,
I try that code. But my saved location is D drive.
But i shows one error. That is Incorrect syntax near ‘ ‘ ‘.
Give the solution.

Thanks,
Vijay Ananth

on March 15, 2010 at 1:29 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Post the full code you used

45. on April 29, 2008 at 6:09 pm | Reply rajesh

hi
it solved my problem
can u please tell how can i schedule stored procedure in sql server2005

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5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…
thanks
rajeh

on March 23, 2010 at 12:17 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Read about JOBs in SQL Server help file

46. on May 1, 2008 at 4:31 am | Reply MB

Hello,

I’m using bulk insert and everything works fine but I cannot get latin characters to import properly. For example, my flat data file contains Sertãozinho but the imported data
displays Sert+úozinho. The “a” character changes to something with plus sign. I tried using nvarchar datatype but it did not help.

Here is my code:

DROP TABLE [DumpData]

GO
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[DumpData](
[DataField1] [varchar](255) NULL
ON [PRIMARY]

–import data using bulk insert

DECLARE @bulk_cmd varchar(1000)
SET @bulk_cmd = ‘BULK INSERT [NalcoSAPDump]
FROM ”c:\DataImport\import.dat”
WITH (FIELDTERMINATOR = ”;”,ROWTERMINATOR = ”’+CHAR(10)+”’)’
EXEC(@bulk_cmd)

Thanks!!

on May 10, 2010 at 11:56 am | Reply Madhivanan

You should have used nvarchar datatype instead of varchar

47. on May 5, 2008 at 12:11 pm | Reply Teo

Hello,

thanks for your answer, Vijay Ananth. :D

Does anybody know something about incremental bulk? It’s just the “normal” bulk insert or there is another thing that I have to add to the bulk sentence?

I want to do a BULK from a csv file. Firstly I do a Bulk of the whole file.

But that csv file changes every time, and in order to have those new rows in my DB I would like to know if there is another way to bulk just the new rows. With that
incremental bulk or something else.

At the moment I’m doing it with bulk every second. So I don’t know if somebody that is writting the file can get an error while the bulk is working.

Any suggestions will be wellcome.

Thanks

48. on May 6, 2008 at 3:36 pm | Reply Manvendra Singh

insert Excel file record in a table + SQL SERVER + C#.net

49. on May 7, 2008 at 12:16 am | Reply dminer

Thanks, helpful post.

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50. on May 8, 2008 at 3:36 am | Reply Panagiotis Lepeniotis

Pinal one more time you saved my life, althought it is the first time that I submit you a commend! Mate you are the best! I hope to reach your level one day!

Panagiotis Lepeniotis
MCDBA,
MSc Database Professional Student!

As for the dataMate who asked about the quotations, I will suggest to edit the csv file, at least thats what I did and worked!

Cheers

51. on May 8, 2008 at 5:25 pm | Reply Deepa

Hi Pinal,

i want to batch upload from excel to sqlserver where i want to insert into multiple table as dependency is there between tables. How to do it? Is it possible to do in c#?
Thank you in advance. I would be very thankful if I get answer quickly as I’m badly in need of it?

52. on May 15, 2008 at 11:46 pm | Reply LK

Dave B
Regarding your question:
Does BULK INSERTing into an existing table that has an index on it take longer than inserting into an existing table without an index?
The answer is no. We tried it out on a large Table (10 mil rows) into which we are loading even more rows. WITHOUT the index, the application timed out. With the index, it
loaded in fine time.

53. on May 27, 2008 at 2:09 pm | Reply Website design Melbouren

thanks a lot!

exactly what i was looking for.

54. on May 27, 2008 at 3:52 pm | Reply Zeenat

BULK INSERT CSVTest

FROM ‘c:\CSVTest.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

I got the following error

Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 2
Incorrect syntax near ‘‘’.
Msg 319, Level 15, State 1, Line 3
Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘with’. If this statement is a common table expression or an xmlnamespaces clause, the previous statement must be terminated with a
semicolon.

Can you please let me know what needs to be done in this case?

55. on May 27, 2008 at 6:22 pm | Reply Elavarasan

Can we do conversions while doing Bulk inserts? (like string to decimal conversions, string to date, string to time etc..,)
Any suggestions is highly appreciated! :)

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on March 30, 2010 at 3:53 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Import data as such

If you want ot convert them to different data types, use update statement

56. on May 27, 2008 at 7:49 pm | Reply Anke

I also get the error: Msg 4860, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Cannot bulk load. The file “c:\csvtest.txt” does not exist.

How do I grant SQL access to the file?

I am running on SQL2005 on an instant I created for myself.

I tried to change the file to have access approved for ‘everyone’, but still this didn’t make any difference. I still get the file doesn’t exist error.

Thank you,
Anke

57. on May 27, 2008 at 9:07 pm | Reply Anke

I was able to resolve.

Thank you!

58. on May 29, 2008 at 6:46 pm | Reply wim

I have the same problem as Kumar. Runs without errors but only every second (alternative) record gets inserted. I have tried different rowterminators, but the problem remains.

bulk insert Gen_ExcelImports from ‘C:\Software\invoices\April2008\csvfile.txt’

with ( FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,FIRSTROW=2,ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’)

Any help would be greatly apprciated. Thanks in advance!

59. on June 3, 2008 at 3:05 am | Reply Plight

I have imported a flat (csv) into SQL Server 2005 using the wizard. I have field called Product Code which has 3 numbers e.g. 003. I imported it as text (default). When I
open the ipmorted table, i have a plus sign next to the Product Codes e.g. +003. Why is it there and how do i get rid of that plus sign? I just want it to show 003.

It is particularly annoying and I want to concatenate the Product Codes with other codes to create an ID.

Please Help

on March 30, 2010 at 4:01 pm | Reply Madhivanan

You should have formatted the cell to be of character type

or use convert function to convert number to varchar

60. on June 4, 2008 at 4:38 am | Reply hi

Hola your example i good

How conncted remote computer for read file in this remote computer.

for example
BULK
INSERT dbo.tblPsoArchivosCalificacion

FROM ‘\\10.63.200.28\Paso\LibroDatos.csv’

WITH
(

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FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)

the question is?

i need net use userid and password to access remote computer.

sorry but my english is bad.

61. on June 11, 2008 at 4:54 pm | Reply Solomon

Hi All,

Appreciate help on below

I want to do conditioal sum in an SQL table as follows

Column1 column2 column3 column 4 column5

a b zzz jjj 4
b a yyy rrr 7
a a fff hhh 3
a b ccc kkk 2
b a kkk ttt 7
b a ggg lll 4
a b yyy kkk 3

what i want to do is,

For values of column1 = ‘a’ then add(sum) column 5 by grouping by column3. for values of column2 = ‘b’ then add (sum) co lumn5 by grouping by column4.

please help!

62. on June 13, 2008 at 2:32 am | Reply Tiga

Krish

Replace ` with ‘ (single quotes)

63. on June 18, 2008 at 10:34 pm | Reply Max

When I run this particular stored proc all of my data comes out in the table with double quotes around it. How would I get rid of these double quotes?

Thanks

64. on June 19, 2008 at 4:29 pm | Reply Tamil

Simple and Suberb information.

Thanx.

65. on June 20, 2008 at 12:38 am | Reply rohan

Hi

Can you tell me if it is possible to execute tis code with sqlcmd in VB.NET.

I am using express editions of VS 2008 and SQL server 2005

66. on June 21, 2008 at 4:46 pm | Reply Haushila

I get the error: Msg 4860, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

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Cannot bulk load. The file “c:\csvtest.txt” does not exist.

OR

Cannot bulk load. The file “c:\csvtest.csv” does not exist.

on March 15, 2010 at 1:36 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Make sure the file exists in SERVER’s directory

67. on June 24, 2008 at 2:30 am | Reply Arunabh

Thanks, it was a very simple solution to meet my requirement.

68. on June 25, 2008 at 3:30 am | Reply Cathy

I’m using the bulk insert statement

BULK INSERT Received

FROM ‘\\Admfs1\users\CPurnell\Responses\C0009348.iff’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR =’|',
ROWTERMINATOR =’ {CR}{LF}\n’
)

This works great for one file. But what I really need to do is bulk insert all .iff files from the Responses folder.

Any suggestions?

on March 30, 2010 at 4:07 pm | Reply Madhivanan

You may need to run the BULK INSERT for all the files
How many such files do you have in the folder?

69. on June 27, 2008 at 10:25 am | Reply sathya

Hi

I tried to insert the data in the table using INSERT Bulk Query.

I used the Query like this:

BULK INSERT insertdatdata FROM ‘D:\mani_new\standard.Dat’

WITH (
DATAFILETYPE = ‘char’,
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘ ‘,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

The file is there in correct path.

But i got the following error.

Cannot bulk load because the file “D:\mani_new\standard.Dat” could not be opened. Operating system error code 3(The system cannot find the path specified.).

please give me some solution.

Its urgent.

Thanks,
Sathya.

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70. on June 27, 2008 at 10:57 am | Reply geetha

I got the error:

Msg 4860, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Cannot bulk load. The file “D:\test.txt” does not exist.

Plz give the solution.

Thanks
Sathya.

71. on June 30, 2008 at 8:14 pm | Reply Rajat

How do we create a table in SQL server through VB.NET code by importing the schema from a TEXT file?

on March 15, 2010 at 1:38 pm | Reply Madhivanan

USE OPENROWSET
Refer this
http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan/archive/2009/10/19/finding-out-problematic-data-in-bulk-insert-data-truncation-error.aspx

72. on July 1, 2008 at 3:11 pm | Reply AJAY DHIMAN

g8

its a true solution

73. on July 1, 2008 at 3:16 pm | Reply AJAY DHIMAN

hi,
sathya

i think u r using sql server client verson. on ur pc

so u have to put the text file on ur data base server’s
“D:\mani_new\standard.Dat” paths.

just do it …………

74. on July 1, 2008 at 6:19 pm | Reply sai

hi pinale,

While working on it i m getting the error file doesnt exist can u suggest me any thing to be done

Thanks

75. on July 2, 2008 at 12:27 am | Reply Anvie

Hi,

Thank you for sharing your code, it really works well ;-)

I tried to open a text file in web but it did not work. Do you have any idea to work it around?

BULK
INSERT bod.temp
FROM ‘http://www.test.com/test.txt‘
WITH
(

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FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘|’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

Thanks!

on March 30, 2010 at 4:36 pm | Reply Madhivanan

No. It wont work

You need to have data in the server’s directory to use that

76. on July 4, 2008 at 12:01 pm | Reply ram r

hi,

can u tell how to load the particular field from dastination file into database…
i am using simple notepad files which is contain 46 columns…

so i want to read the input file and insert only three columns (column 1, column 15,column 46) into the tables…

is there any commands existing for doing this type of file handling…

i m using sqlserver 7

plz help me…

77. on July 8, 2008 at 9:52 pm | Reply Amel K

I have to import a csv file into an existing table that has different column names from the originating one. How do I match differently named fields ?

Thank you

on March 15, 2010 at 1:39 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Different column names doesn’t matter as long as number of columns and datatypes are equivalnet

on March 15, 2010 at 2:39 pm | Reply Sandeep

Hi Madhivanan,

Could you please mail me the query how to extract column headers using BCP command and also column names changes every time .
Thanks in advance :
waiting for your reply (as soon as possible)

78. on July 9, 2008 at 10:18 am | Reply masky

hi, i want to upload a cvs file frm asp.dot page and the file should automatically extract into sql database table. the table is created, plz help out…

79. on July 10, 2008 at 6:38 am | Reply Mikez

I just wanted to say that this solution is so quick and easy. I found a ton of other way too complicated examples. This just cuts right to the quick and gets the job done.

Thanks for this excellent code snippet!

Mike

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80. on July 15, 2008 at 9:48 am | Reply Nick

Hi Pinal,

I am attempting to use the bcp utility (via command prompt) in order to create a comma-separated text file named Inside Sales Coordinator. Here is the new table created in
the Northwind database:
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[NewEmployees](
[EmployeeID] [int] NOT NULL CONSTRAINT [PK_NewEmployees] PRIMARY KEY,
[LastName] [nvarchar](20) NOT NULL,
[FirstName] [nvarchar](10) NOT NULL,
[Title] [nvarchar](30) NULL,
[TitleOfCourtesy] [nvarchar](25) NULL,
[BirthDate] [datetime] NULL,
[HireDate] [datetime] NULL,
[Address] [nvarchar](60) NULL,
[City] [nvarchar](15) NULL,
[Region] [nvarchar](15) NULL,
[PostalCode] [nvarchar](10) NULL,
[Country] [nvarchar](15) NULL,
[HomePhone] [nvarchar](24) NULL,
[Extension] [nvarchar](4) NULL,
[Notes] [ntext] NULL,
[ReportsTo] [int] NULL,
[PhotoPath] [nvarchar](255) NULL
) The new comma-separated text file should contains the following columns from the NewEmployees table: EmployeeID, LastName, FirstName, HireDate (date part only; no
time), and Extension. Only those employees with a Title of “Inside Sales Coordinator” should be returned.
Here is what I came up with so far:
bcp “select EmployeeID, LastName, FirstName, HireDate, Extension from Northwind.dbo.NewEmployees” out C:\InsideSalesCoordinators.csv –c –t , –T -S
SDGLTQATEAM\SQLExpress can you give me a little insight on how to populate the .csv file. Thanks

81. on July 15, 2008 at 8:03 pm | Reply PSilva

This Procedure can help in ASP.NET

CREATE PROCEDURE ImportFile

@File VARCHAR(100)
AS

EXECUTE (‘BULK INSERT TableName FROM ”’ + @File + ”’

WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ”;”
, ROWTERMINATOR = ”\n”
, CODEPAGE = ”RAW”
)’ )

/*
EXEC dbo.ImportFile ‘c:\csv\text.csv’
*/

C# Code

SqlConnection cnn = new SqlConnection(

string.Format(@”Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=DB_Name;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=;Password=” ));

SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(“ImportFile”, cnn);

cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;
cmd.Parameters.Add(“@File”, SqlDbType.VarChar).Value = txtFile.text;
cnn.Open();
cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
cnn.Close();

82. on July 16, 2008 at 7:25 pm | Reply Jignesh

Hi,

Most of the time, I search this site for answers of my SQL questions. And here I have one more….

I am using SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition on Windows Server 2003.

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I wanted to load Double quote enclosed, comma delimited text file into SQL Server 2005. There was no header record in the file.
I used “SQL Server Import Export Wizard” to perform this task. I chose Data Source = Flat File Source, selected .csv file using Browse button, specified Text qualifier as
double quote (“). There are total 17 fields in the upload file and under Advanced section they were named from “Column 0″ to “Column 16″. The default length of each column
was 50. I specified length of the “Column 5″ as 200 because I know the length data in that column was more than 50. I have checked rest of the columns and made sure that
length 50 was enough for other fields.
I clicked on Finish to start uploading and I got following error:

————————————-
Error 0xc02020c5: Data Flow Task: Data conversion failed while converting column “Column 4″ (26) to column “Column 4″ (136). The conversion returned status value 2
and status text “The value could not be converted because of a potential loss of data.”.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)

Error 0xc0209029: Data Flow Task: SSIS Error Code DTS_E_INDUCEDTRANSFORMFAILUREONERROR. The “output column “Column 4″ (136)” failed because
error code 0xC020907F occurred, and the error row disposition on “output column “Column 4″ (136)” specifies failure on error. An error occurred on the specified object of
the specified component. There may be error messages posted before this with more information about the failure.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)

Error 0xc0047022: Data Flow Task: SSIS Error Code DTS_E_PROCESSINPUTFAILED. The ProcessInput method on component “Data Conversion 1″ (112) failed with
error code 0xC0209029. The identified component returned an error from the ProcessInput method. The error is specific to the component, but the error is fatal and will cause
the Data Flow task to stop running. There may be error messages posted before this with more information about the failure.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)

Error 0xc0047021: Data Flow Task: SSIS Error Code DTS_E_THREADFAILED. Thread “WorkThread0″ has exited with error code 0xC0209029. There may be error
messages posted before this with more information on why the thread has exited.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)

Error 0xc02020c4: Data Flow Task: The attempt to add a row to the Data Flow task buffer failed with error code 0xC0047020.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)

Error 0xc0047038: Data Flow Task: SSIS Error Code DTS_E_PRIMEOUTPUTFAILED. The PrimeOutput method on component “Source – Giftlink_2008_csv” (1)
returned error code 0xC02020C4. The component returned a failure code when the pipeline engine called PrimeOutput(). The meaning of the failure code is defined by the
component, but the error is fatal and the pipeline stopped executing. There may be error messages posted before this with more information about the failure.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)

Error 0xc0047021: Data Flow Task: SSIS Error Code DTS_E_THREADFAILED. Thread “SourceThread0″ has exited with error code 0xC0047038. There may be error
messages posted before this with more information on why the thread has exited.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)
————————————-

I have checked “Column 4″ length and it was 50 which was much enough for data in that column.

Is anyone has any idea on this?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

83. on July 21, 2008 at 5:04 pm | Reply iftekhar

Please help me
Iam using sql server 2000,7.0 ..I want to do a similar operation..

84. on July 25, 2008 at 1:06 am | Reply vijay

Hi there

I’m facing an issue in Bulk insertion. Whenever i query the command –

BULK INSERT vijay FROM ‘c:\vijay.csv’ WITH (FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’, ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’);

sql throwing an error “ORA-00900: invalid SQL statement”.

Could anyone help me out in this issue?

Thanks in advance.

on March 15, 2010 at 1:41 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Note that the informations or Queries given in this site are for MS SQL Server and not for ORACLE

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85. on July 25, 2008 at 12:53 pm | Reply shahbaz

i am facing an issue that is i have text file like below format

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA BBBBBBBBBBBBB CCCCCCCCCCCC

DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD EEEEEEEEEEE

AAA BBB CCC DDD EEE FFF

121 john Albert 1-1-08 ok No
121 john Albert 1-1-08 ok No
121 john Albert 1-1-08 ok No

in this format AAA,BBB,CCC…FFF this are heads of column Now

i want to insert this text data of each head in Sqlserver database table in separate column mens AAA head data sould be save in AAA column in SqlServer Databse

86. on July 25, 2008 at 2:01 pm | Reply charles

hi..my text file is quite complicated, the field terminator only can use by ‘length’ to seperate…please refer the text file i copy paste as example

VENDORID INVNO INVDATE PONO PODATE

S0016 TB080767924/07/08BD-01/07/08

the fieldterminator surely cannot use by space bar…can i use the length to seperate the field? if yes…please guide how to…

thanks and regards

87. on August 1, 2008 at 3:24 am | Reply nicole

Pinal, nice and simple code, but I cannot solve the problem

——————————————————————————

Meldung 4860, Ebene 16, Status 1, Zeile 2

Massenladen ist nicht möglich. Die Datei “c:\csvtest.txt” ist nicht vorhanden.

(0 Zeile(n) betroffen)

FILE DOES NOT EXIST

——————————————————————————

There are many users with the same issue, can you advice what I need to do

many thanks

on March 15, 2010 at 1:42 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Copy the File to Server’s directory and try it will work

88. on August 1, 2008 at 10:18 am | Reply Rubavathi

Hi,

How to import from CSV to new table? I tried with OPENROWSET . but it shows error if there are any special characters in the file name(say for example ‘-’).

on March 23, 2010 at 12:27 pm | Reply Madhivanan

When you use OPENROWSET you should specify files names within double qutes

89. on August 2, 2008 at 3:23 am | Reply Robert

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I was getting the same problem as other here with the error reading

The file “c:\Test.txt” does not exist.

Looks like the the SQL commands will only work when the file itself is on the actual SQL server box. I was getting this error using SQL Admin on another box and as soon as
I moved the file to the server itself, I could run the command from any machine but would still reference the file on the actual SQL box. Enjoy!

on January 18, 2011 at 6:07 pm | Reply visy and sumitha

protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

// import data from txtfile to sql server

SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(“Data Source=DEVELOPMENT\\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=my data;Integrated Security=True”);

string filepath = “C:\\Documents and Settings\\Developer\\Desktop\\txtFilesFolder\\data1.txt”;
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(filepath);
string line = sr.ReadLine();
string[] value = line.Split(‘,’);
DataTable dt = new DataTable();
DataRow row;

foreach (string dc in value)

{
dt.Columns.Add(new DataColumn(dc));
}

while (!sr.EndOfStream)
{
value = sr.ReadLine().Split(‘,’);

if (value.Length == dt.Columns.Count)
{
row = dt.NewRow();
row.ItemArray = value;
dt.Rows.Add(row);

con.Open();

cmd = new SqlCommand(“insert into dbo.text_data1 (ID,Name,Gender,Age ) values (” + row.ItemArray[0] + “,’” + row.ItemArray[1] + “‘,’” + row.ItemArray[2] +
“‘,” + row.ItemArray[3] + “)”, con);

cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
con.Close();
}
}

90. on August 5, 2008 at 1:30 am | Reply Saman

I’m trying to do an import from a text file using the BULK INSERT. The text file is separated by fixed width (no delimiters).

Can anybody give me an example query for this?

91. on August 5, 2008 at 10:38 am | Reply Sultan

Hi Pinal,

How to create a CSV or Text file from a Stored Procedure?

Thanks

Sultan

92. on August 5, 2008 at 8:41 pm | Reply Saman

I found how to do this by inserting all the data into one column and then using the substring function to split the columns. It worked…

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93. on August 6, 2008 at 12:54 am | Reply hrishikesh

hi pinal
i have got the same problem as charles. my text file has no spcific delimiter. the columns can be only separated in terms of length.how can such text filebe loaded?

thanks

94. on August 8, 2008 at 4:56 am | Reply Ron

I’m wanting to upload a csv file into phpmyadmin, but you last me after you said, “February 6, 2008″!

Can you give me any help on a 5th grade level?

Ron

95. on August 8, 2008 at 1:53 pm | Reply Chris

Firstly, thanks for this article, it is great to see the whole code posted rather than individual bits all around.

Please could you assist me with this scenario:

I have 6 columns created in the CSVTemp table, the last two columns could have null values so I have specified this using LastName VARCHAR(40)NULL

When I execute the query, the next record is placed in the first of the NULL columns instead of the next line e.g.:
File contains information: 1,2,3,4,5
20,30,40,50,60,70

CSVTemp table Col1 Col2 Col3 Col4 Col5 Col6

1 2 3 4 5 20

I am using your example the ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’ but yet sql still reflects this record as above. How to I inform SQL to insert that 20 into the column 1, rather than
continuing?

96. on August 11, 2008 at 11:03 pm | Reply Hafz

Okay here is my dilemma…

I have multiple csv with data in each file. They are connected via foreign keys (with each table having its on primary key). I want to load these tables into an Oracle database
using SQL. If i know the order in which the tables should be loaded how do i go about loading the tables into the Oracle db.

E.g.

// CSV 1
Fields = ID_NUMBER | Name | Date
Data = 12345 (PK)| Hafiz | 12-12-2008 |

// CSV2
Field = ID_PRODUCT_ NUMBER | ID_NUMBER | Colour | Type
Data = 54321 (PK) | 12345 (FK) | Black| Car |

The Oracle DB has the tables setup with the same field name. I want to load CSV 1 first into Oracle Table 1 and then CSV 2 into Oracle Table 2 (must be in this order or will
run into referential integrity issues.

The next step is to make this applicable to csv files with 100 lines of data each (probably using some sort of iterative process). Can you help??????????

on January 22, 2010 at 6:47 pm | Reply Mitesh Oswal

IF OBJECT_ID(‘tempdb..#temp1′)IS NOT NULL

BEGIN
DROP TABLE #temp1
END

CREATE TABLE #temp1

(
Output VARCHAR(MAX)

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)

SELECT * FROM #temp1

INSERT INTO #temp1(Output)

EXEC master..xp_cmdShell ‘type C:\1.csv’

DECLARE @NoOfColumns INT,

@SQL NVARCHAR(MAX),
@IntCount INT

SELECT
TOP 1
@NoOfColumns =
LEN(OUTPUT)-LEN(REPLACE(OUTPUT,’,',”))+1,
@IntCount = 1

FROM
#temp1

IF OBJECT_ID(‘temp’)IS NOT NULL BEGIN DROP TABLE temp END ;

SELECT
@SQL =
N’ create table temp ( ‘

WHILE(@IntCount <= @NoOFColumns)

BEGIN

SELECT @SQL =
@SQL +
N' F'+CAST(@IntCount AS VARCHAR(5)) + N' VARCHAR(500) ,'

SELECT @IntCount = @IntCount + 1

END
SELECT
@SQL = LEFT(@SQL,LEN(@SQL)-1)+N' ) '

EXECUTE (@SQL)

BULK INSERT temp FROM 'c:\1.csv' WITH ( FIELDTERMINATOR = ',',ROWTERMINATOR = '\n')

SELECT * FROM temp

97. on August 14, 2008 at 11:14 am | Reply Emeka

@MD
The data you imported is stored and sorted based on the collation setting you choose when sql server was installed or when the database was created.

Read more about collation settings, then you will be able to troubleshoot the problem.

98. on August 14, 2008 at 11:16 am | Reply Emeka

@MB
The data you imported is stored and sorted based on the collation setting you choose when sql server was installed or when the database was created.

Read more about collation settings, then you will be able to troubleshoot the problem.

99. on August 17, 2008 at 4:33 am | Reply verma

Hi,

This article was very helpful to me. However I do have one question, how would you modify this script if you have a text file that doesn’t have set number of columns. E.g.:

row1: col1,col2,col3
row2: col1,col2
row3: col1,col2,col3,col4
row4: col1,col2,col,3,col4,col5

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I tried to load this file using the above script, i was able to load the data but the data couldn’t be loaded correctly.

Help please.

Thanks

100. on August 21, 2008 at 3:58 pm | Reply Harminder Singh

Hi ,
those who are facing problem that the text file does not exists
copy ur file to server where ur sql server exists
nice article

on June 11, 2010 at 8:01 pm | Reply John

Thank you, Harminder! This fixed my issue immediately!!

Very good article!!

101. on August 22, 2008 at 6:58 pm | Reply MaryO

Hi,
Great forum! I am encountering an issue that I have always been able to overcome, but this time it has me stuck. I have a .txt file that is comma delimited. There are some data
issues in the file. Normally, I would import all records into one column, then parse from there. I am using {LF} as both the column delimiter and record delimiter, so that all data
will go into my table that has 1 large (nvarchar (4000)) field. When the import hits line 62007, I get an error message “Column Delimiter Not Found.” I can look at the text file
in jujuEdit and see the {LF} at the end of each column.

Has anyone encountered anything like this before?

Thanks!

102. on August 25, 2008 at 10:01 pm | Reply Melissa

The command is run from the sql server, you can put the file anywhere on the network and you should no longer get the error that the file does not exist.

103. on August 25, 2008 at 10:02 pm | Reply Melissa

Did anyone ever get a solution to the text qualifiers (double quotes in the text)?

104. on August 26, 2008 at 3:19 pm | Reply brammam

Hi Melissa

I tried to insert text which has double quotes in that text, its executed successfully with out any error.

my text file data is like this

12 I need “my” car brakes to be changed

14 ertetr etert ert etert
15 i need a land line phone in my home

if its not the case can you describe problem details.

105. on August 28, 2008 at 6:06 pm | Reply Subhrangshu

Hi all!

my problem is that during bulk insertion, it is showing that

“You do not have permission to use the bulk load statement.”

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so can anyone tell me how to give permission for bulk insertion.

on August 26, 2010 at 11:51 pm | Reply Austin

You must have sysadmin level security to execute a bulk insert command.

106. on August 30, 2008 at 7:12 pm | Reply Shimu

Thanks .it’s realy helpfull for me

107. on August 30, 2008 at 7:26 pm | Reply Shimu

now i do it from server side. i want to do t from frontant. i use VB.NET 2005 and SQL SERVER 2005.From a form i want to do the work when i click on butto. now where i
write the code.

on March 17, 2010 at 1:39 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Create a procedure that accepts file name as parameter

You can execute that procedure from the VB.NET application by passing file name

108. on September 5, 2008 at 7:36 pm | Reply Mandar

Pinalbhai!

It has helped a lot. Especially since Microsoft has not provided SSIS in SQL Server 2005 express edition.

109. on September 10, 2008 at 3:41 pm | Reply GV

Hi All,

I want to read the the csv file and insert into table using sql server 2005. I have code below. This will do that insert using OPENROWSET function. My pblm is when i give th
.csv file with out header it throws an exception like ‘Duplicate column names are not allowed in result sets obtained through OPENQUERY and OPENROWSET. The column
name “NoName” is a duplicate.’ can anyone solve this pblm

Dim strSQL As String

strSQL = “Select * ” & _
” INTO ” & DATABASE & “.dbo.[List_staging] ” & _
“FROM OPENROWSET(‘MSDASQL’,'Driver={Microsoft Text Driver (*.txt; *.csv)}; DEFAULTDIR=C:\VoicenetSQL\project\tampa\Politic\” & projectfile & “;
Extensions=CSV; HDR=No;’,'SELECT * FROM at1008.csv’) ”

Thanks in advance..
G.V

on March 17, 2010 at 1:44 pm | Reply Madhivanan

You need to remove that column Noname from csv file to successfully execute the script

110. on September 12, 2008 at 3:11 am | Reply PeterB

This may be the best tech blog I have ever seen. Keep up the good work!

111. on September 12, 2008 at 9:50 am | Reply Nadeem

Hi Pinal,
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Thank’s a lot. It has solved my problem.

Regards,
Nadeem.

112. on September 15, 2008 at 11:58 am | Reply Minchala Murali

Hi,

I need to restore the data from SQL server 2005 to 2000. In my data there are many languages(it means that data has mixure of all characters).

Are datatypes similar in SQL server 2000 and 2005? am receiving the problem datatype problem..

can any one suggest me how do i restore it?

Regards,
Minchala

113. on September 20, 2008 at 1:29 am | Reply Mario

excellent!!!!!!

114. on September 20, 2008 at 2:32 am | Reply Michael Arnold

Just wanted to say thanks. This code worked perfectly for a simple program i wrote to run at a scheduled time. It saved me so much work from having to manually parse the
CSV!

115. on September 25, 2008 at 1:42 am | Reply Edson

Hi, thanks for the post, I noted that the size of the table is too big you can reduce it?

grateful,

Edson

116. on September 27, 2008 at 4:44 am | Reply Mark

Hi Dave,
You are amazing, thanks for sharing your knowledge.

I need a stored proc to import data from a .txt file to a table in sql server 2000 but I need to do it using BCP command and the stored proc should also perform error handling,
if possible could you please post the stored proc which performs this job.

117. on September 27, 2008 at 11:58 am | Reply Oyen

Thanks! I’m glad your blog always comes up in one of the first google hits. You help a lot :)

118. on October 7, 2008 at 12:24 am | Reply Mehdi Anis

It is an excellent example indeed .Thanks.

I am trying to load a CSV file from a VB .NET 2.0 app. Since the CSV file is in user’s local drive, I can not use BULK INPUT method, can I?

Bulk Input method requires the CSV file to be present in the SQL Server’s local drive/folder, right?

I will appreciate if you can comment on my assumptions. Thanks.

Regards,
Mehdi Anis

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on March 15, 2010 at 2:55 pm | Reply Madhivanan

If it is in a User’s machine, use UNC path like

//machine_name/folder_name

and make sure the file is readable by a Server

119. on October 10, 2008 at 2:16 am | Reply Jannable

Dude. You just saved my life.

120. on October 15, 2008 at 7:59 am | Reply wad3v4

Hi
I’m having some problem something similar to what you have explained, bt the only difference is that my data in csv file is not seperated with commas, its all chunk together bt i
want my output to be like yours. Any idea how i may be able to do that?
Thanks in advance. =)

121. on October 16, 2008 at 11:52 am | Reply raghav

Hi,
Excellent Code to import data from text file into Database
Thanks.

122. on October 16, 2008 at 12:10 pm | Reply Hemanth

HI dave,

i need to store a file content in database, it could be a text file or image file how can i??????

123. on October 17, 2008 at 9:32 pm | Reply Bhavin

HI,

The above code works great for me, But I have several problem

1] I have the CSV file with 1155585 records the format of data is

“Bhavin”,”Mumbai”,”10/2/2004″,1,2,3,4,5
“Bhavin12″,”Mumbai12″,”10/2/2005″,1,2,3,4,5

so what i did i replace all string which contains Quotes to null i.e nothing

now the data looks like

Bhavin,Mumbai,10/2/2004,1,2,3,4,5
Bhavin12,Mumbai12,10/2/2005,1,2,3,4,5

Now I tried using the above code with comma as a deliminator, but I can only see 1155195 records

plz help me how to proceed…..

124. on October 22, 2008 at 7:12 pm | Reply Foxy09ro

Fisrt of all, thank you for your example with bulk insert it solved my problem, but I styill have a little problem: I have in my .csv file special characters like (şţăîâ) and I’d like
some help on this matter, please!
Thank you!

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125. on October 24, 2008 at 5:10 am | Reply Joe

Excellent article!

I am importing a csv file and several fields have a very long field length (200 characters). I want to truncate it (25 characters) and add a special character (for example a tilde to
advise me the data is truncated) after importing. Any suggestion would be appreciated.

Thank you.

126. on October 30, 2008 at 12:13 am | Reply Rose

I get this error msg on simple 6 row table(same format and file location as described above):

Msg 4832, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Bulk load: An unexpected end of file was encountered in the data file.
Msg 7399, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
The OLE DB provider “BULK” for linked server “(null)” reported an error. The provider did not give any information about the error.
Msg 7330, Level 16, State 2, Line 1
Cannot fetch a row from OLE DB provider “BULK” for linked server “(null)”.

any help for this?

on March 1, 2010 at 9:23 am | Reply shruti

Hi Rose,

I’m also getting same kind of problem in bulk insert.

Could you get any solution to this problem.

Thanks

on March 30, 2010 at 4:44 pm | Reply Madhivanan

If the last line is empty in the file, remove it and try the code again

127. on October 30, 2008 at 2:09 am | Reply Chief

hello,

Looking to import a txt file that at present errors when dts package enncounters nagative vlaues. Any suggestions?

Negative values are assoicated with Money

0000003.34 will pass

00000-3.34 will fail

Thanks,

Cheif

128. on November 1, 2008 at 11:51 pm | Reply Chris H

I used the script to import a CSV into a new table in Database Explorer in Visual Web Developer. It works! Thanks for your help.

129. on November 3, 2008 at 10:42 pm | Reply Carolin

I am using your query to import CSV file to Sql Server.

But I am getting the following error”Cannot bulk load. The file “C:\CSVTest.txt” does not exist.”

What should I do now?

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Any suggestions are welcome.

130. on November 5, 2008 at 12:26 am | Reply Mayank Srivastava

While runnning BULK INSERT statement, i am getting error

BULK INSERT #temptb FROM ‘/home/msrivast/temptable.txt’

go

sg 102, Level 15, State 0

ASA Error -131: Syntax error near ‘BULK’ on line 1

Please help

131. on November 6, 2008 at 6:05 am | Reply Suranga

Hi Pinal,

How do we load CSV file has embedded newlines (in varchar colomuns) into MS SQL server?

For instance, how do we load the CSV file below. Note that the second record has a “newline”/”line break” in Column 2

id, reason, season

==, =====, =====
10,’cold’, ‘winter’
12,’cold
flu’,'autumn’

132. on November 7, 2008 at 3:39 am | Reply Brian

i couldn’t find anyone with an answer for dealing with CSV’s that have quotes in the text with commas within them.

The key issue being importing this:

Col1, Col2, Col3
“Joe”,”Smith”,”Sr Architect”
“Nicole”,”Dawson”,”Manager”
“Jon”,”Stephens, PHD”,”PM”

I was able to work out this solution. Basically describe the delimiter (field terminator) as “,” like this using XML Format Files for SQL Server:

And notice i had to describe the ” as " format for each field (i only listed 1 as the example).

Thanks
-B

133. on November 10, 2008 at 12:14 am | Reply A.prasad

I am loading lattitude longitude information into database using load file command.I loaded them into database successfully .But after checking using “select * from data base
name” it’s showing all zeros.Any help would be helpful.Thanx in advance.

134. on November 10, 2008 at 11:12 am | Reply Sanobur Mahmood

What if I want to load hundred of files with one script saved into one folder? Above script is just a fun. Do something actual through which many people can find the solution to
their problems.

135. on November 12, 2008 at 1:04 pm | Reply Amrit

Please help.

i get large amount of information in an excel file which i need to store in MSSql database. i used to import but i need to make an ASP interface that picks the information from
excel or csv and inserts into the database.

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is it possible?

136. on November 13, 2008 at 7:36 am | Reply Mohfeza

please help me. I got following error when i run insertion script below-
USE WATCHDOIT
BULK
INSERT CSVTest1
FROM ‘C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\WatchDoit\BusinessList1.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)

Msg 4832, Level 16, State 1, Line 2

Bulk load: An unexpected end of file was encountered in the data file.
Msg 7399, Level 16, State 1, Line 2
The OLE DB provider “BULK” for linked server “(null)” reported an error. The provider did not give any information about the error.
Msg 7330, Level 16, State 2, Line 2
Cannot fetch a row from OLE DB provider “BULK” for linked server “(null)”.

137. on November 15, 2008 at 3:18 am | Reply Jaideep

Msg 4832, Level 16, State 1, Line 2

Bulk load: An unexpected end of file was encountered in the data file.
Msg 7399, Level 16, State 1, Line 2
The OLE DB provider “BULK” for linked server “(null)” reported an error. The provider did not give any information about the error.
Msg 7330, Level 16, State 2, Line 2
Cannot fetch a row from OLE DB provider “BULK” for linked server “(null)”.

138. on November 19, 2008 at 8:39 am | Reply SivaSakthi

Really Superb Pinal Sir..

I m njoying your SQL Tips daily…

Continue with your Favours…

Bye…

139. on November 20, 2008 at 1:25 pm | Reply Ketan

Hi,
insert Only one row
Plz help me

as early as possible

on March 17, 2010 at 1:57 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Try

BULK
INSERT CSVTest
FROM 'c:\csvtest.txt'
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ',',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
FIRST_ROW=1;
LAST_ROW=2;
)

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GO

140. on November 28, 2008 at 5:22 pm | Reply jas

Hi,
I’m using bulk insert and everything works fine but I cannot get ‘£’ sign characters to import properly. It always change into ‘?’ sign. I tried using nvarchar datatype but it did
not help.

Please Help me.

Thanks

141. on December 9, 2008 at 2:55 pm | Reply Vaibhav

Hi,

I wants to use bulk insert for a text file with fieldterminator as a space. How do I use It.

Regards,

Vaibhav

on March 23, 2010 at 12:33 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Example

BULK
INSERT CSVTest
FROM 'c:\csvtest.txt'
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ' ',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
)

142. on December 10, 2008 at 12:56 pm | Reply mukulbudania

Sir,
that is already done. can you suggest me a way to defin th table by its own using the CSV file. i.e. my first row is the column name. Now how do i create a table using the
variable column names??

tank in advance.

Mukul.

143. on December 11, 2008 at 7:34 pm | Reply Puja Shah

Hi Pinal,

I have used Bulk command, but want to get the file path of CSV file. I want file path using T-SQL.

Please tell me how to get the file path only by providing file name.

Thanks in advance….

on March 25, 2010 at 1:40 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Try this code

declare @sql varchar(1000)

set @sq=’BULK INSERT dbo.TableName
FROM ”’+@FileName+”’

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WITH ( FIELDTERMINATOR=’’;”, ROWTERMINATOR=’’\\n’’)’
EXEC(@sql)

144. on December 18, 2008 at 2:20 pm | Reply sai

Hi Pinal,

Yours query is marvellous but i want the same query to access a text file to online server with the text placed in client machine

Can any one suggest me

Thanks in advance

145. on December 19, 2008 at 8:00 pm | Reply samrat bhattacharjee

Hi!!
i am facing a problem…..

i am trying to bulk insert data into a table.

the stored procedure goes like this…

====================================
CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[insbulk]
@circle varchar(20),@path varchar(100)
AS
bulk insert @circle from @path with (fieldterminator=’,')
GO
======================================

The thing is that this is a wronh syntax…..

My frontend application goes like this…

which takes input the filename ie the path,the tablename
===================================
SqlCommand cmd=new SqlCommand(“insbulk”,conn);
cmd.CommandType=CommandType.StoredProcedure;

cmd.Parameters.Add(“@circle”,this.cmbcircle.SelectedItem.ToString());
cmd.Parameters.Add(“@path”,this.fldg.FileName);
cmd.Parameters.Add(“@insertiondate”,insertiondate);
cmd.ExecuteScalar();

}
catch
{
MessageBox.Show(“Error!!!Connection terminating with database”);
conn.Close();
}

146. on December 20, 2008 at 7:57 am | Reply Imran Mohammed

@samrat

First try executing that stored procedure in SQL Server Client tools.

Check if it is working fine ?

Regards
IM

147. on December 27, 2008 at 5:41 am | Reply Santosh

Thanks

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148. on December 29, 2008 at 10:07 pm | Reply harinath clavib

Hi
how to transfer data into multitables from csv file and is it possible to tranfer the data into constraint tables.

149. on January 1, 2009 at 6:34 am | Reply Tab

I am trying to import data from multiple text files into sql server 2005. After the data has been imported in the sq server, i want to move the files to another folder. Does anyone
have a solution to this?

Thanks in advance.

150. on January 1, 2009 at 3:58 pm | Reply Abhishek Hingu

Hi this article is very helpfull

I was trying to run same query with SQL Server Compact Edition Database.

But faild to do same can u please help me in this

151. on January 2, 2009 at 10:31 am | Reply tejasnshah

Hi Abhisek,

To move file after processing, you need to use SSIS for that.

In that you can process file and later you can move/Delete that file too.

Tejas

152. on January 8, 2009 at 3:29 am | Reply Meir

I had the same problem. Copying the file to the DBserver and calling the file with full name worked.

…..
bulk insert dict from “\\dbserver\mydirectory\myfile.txt”
……

153. on January 10, 2009 at 1:47 am | Reply marshall

Hi Pinal

154. on January 10, 2009 at 1:50 am | Reply marshall

Hi Pinal & all-

Help please

I have a csv file that contains data like this

“1″,”james”,”smith”,”2323″

how do I import this to a table without the double quotes.I want to avoid a intermideate convirsion into an excell file since I like to schaduele this as a job.

155. on January 15, 2009 at 3:44 pm | Reply julie

hey pinal
i am trying 2 import data from multiple text files into sql server
giving error
ADODB.Field (0x800A0BCD)

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Either BOF or EOF is True, or the current record has been deleted. Requested operation requires a current record.
/forum/post_message.asp, line 211

on this particular stmt

objRSInsert.Open “Select * from messages where message_id=IDENT_CURRENT(‘messages’)”, cnnForumDC, adOpenDynamic, adLockPessimistic

iNewMessageId = objRSInsert.Fields(“message_id”)
If thread_id = 0 Then
objRSInsert.Fields(“thread_id”) = iNewMessageId
objRSInsert.Update
End If

156. on January 15, 2009 at 4:28 pm | Reply julie

hey pinal
i am trying 2 import data from multiple text files into sql server
giving error
ADODB.Field (0×800A0BCD)
Either BOF or EOF is True, or the current record has been deleted. Requested operation requires a current record.
/forum/post_message.asp, line 211

on this particular stmt

objRSInsert.Open “Select * from messages where message_id=IDENT_CURRENT(’messages’)”, cnnForumDC, adOpenDynamic, adLockPessimistic

iNewMessageId = objRSInsert.Fields(”message_id”)
If thread_id = 0 Then
objRSInsert.Fields(”thread_id”) = iNewMessageId
objRSInsert.Update
End If

157. on January 20, 2009 at 2:36 am | Reply Jorge Ochoa

As would be script if the columns have quotation marks double? For example:

“1″,”James”,”Smith”,”19750101″
“2″,”Meggie”,”Smith”,”19790122″
“3″,”Robert”,”Smith”,”20071101″
“4″,”Alex”,”Smith”,”20040202″

I have following script as she would modify?

BULK
INSERT CSVTest
FROM ‘c:\csvtest.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

158. on January 23, 2009 at 4:16 pm | Reply Amudha

Hi,

I regularly looking at this knowledge sharing site.

Nice and very informative

* How to import the Excel file to the remote SQL Server without using OBDC, ie only with Stored Procedure?

159. on February 4, 2009 at 2:06 am | Reply Satrebla

Hi,

How to import data like this:

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“qwe,asd,zxc”,123,sometext

The result i whant to have:

qwe,asd,zxc 123 sometext

but what i have is:

“qwe asd zxc”,123,sometext

Any thoughts?
Thanks

160. on February 4, 2009 at 2:14 am | Reply Satrebla

Sorry result i whant to have:

“qwe,asd,zxc” 123 sometext
:)

161. on February 4, 2009 at 9:06 am | Reply Imran Mohammed

@Satrebla

If you have( ” ) character at fixed length for every value that goes into that column, then you can use substring function and select only those characters that you want ignoring
rest of them and concatinate with other values (if needed)

Regards,
IM.

162. on February 4, 2009 at 1:20 pm | Reply Satrebla

@Imran Mohammed

Thanks for reply, but lenth is variable. For example:

“abc,qwe,zxc”,123,txt
“qwe,asd,fgh,jkl”,456,qqq
“12233,456789″,rty,159

..?

163. on February 18, 2009 at 3:21 am | Reply nm

replace commas that aren’t embedded between quotes with a character that won’t be used. change fieldterminator to be that new character.

can probably also use fmt file, but i’ve never used one so not positive

164. on February 24, 2009 at 11:08 am | Reply Vineeta

Hi,

I would like to know how do we import a remote text to some other server in sql server 2005 ?

165. on February 24, 2009 at 9:41 pm | Reply desha

how or where do you write the script that you are publishing. I am new to the import but not asp.net. How do you import into a table that you have already constructed with the
gui in asp.net.

166. on February 25, 2009 at 11:09 pm | Reply SQL SERVER - Top Five Articles of Year 2008 Journey to SQL Authority with Pinal Dave

[...] SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQL Server Using Bulk Insert – Load Comma Delimited File Into SQL …Bulk inserting data from CSV file to SQL Server

…sqlauthority.com/…/sql-server-import… 38/94
5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…
database is now simplified with this article. [...]

167. on March 13, 2009 at 6:06 pm | Reply Vinod

Thanks a lot..
It is working fine

168. on March 16, 2009 at 3:23 pm | Reply Praveen Agrawal

How We can Insert The Data in sq l server through Excel Sheet. Here i don’t have ‘,’ field or Line termination.

169. on March 16, 2009 at 7:21 pm | Reply Tejas Shah

select *
from
OPENROWSET(‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′,
‘Excel 8.0;Database=c:\.xls’, [$])
) AS x

170. on March 16, 2009 at 7:22 pm | Reply Tejas Shah

Hi Praveen,

select *
from
OPENROWSET(‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′,
‘Excel 8.0;Database=c:\ExcelFileName.xls’, [YourSheetName$])
) AS x

Thanks,

171. on March 17, 2009 at 9:24 am | Reply Praveen Agrawal

Thanks Tejas

172. on March 17, 2009 at 12:14 pm | Reply Praveen Agrawal

Hi All,

how to join two different tables on different server

173. on March 17, 2009 at 3:57 pm | Reply Tejas Shah

Hi Praveen,

Is SQL PORT open for any server?

If yes, then you can use:

SELECT *
FROM table A
INNER JOIN
(
OPENROWSET(‘SQLOLEDB’,'ServerAddress’;'User’;'Password’,
‘select * from
table
‘)
)B
ON A.id = b.Id
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Thanks,

Tejas

174. on March 19, 2009 at 4:00 pm | Reply pavan

Hi,

I had implemented this “Bulk Insert” in Sql 2005, i am getting

Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 7

Incorrect syntax near ‘‘’.

my Statement ..

BULK

INSERT ccprocessorstandardpayee
FROM ‘c:\csvtest.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

please help me..

thnk u..

175. on March 22, 2009 at 8:02 pm | Reply Peter

Just a note that somehow – doesn’t matter to me – I was stymied at first by “fancy” quotes or apostrophes. That is, I was inclined to copy/paste your stuff, and SQL returned
syntax errors having to do with the use of NON- straight (up & down) single quotes. I happened to figure out the problem but someone else might get frustrated prematurely.
Since there’s some problem having to do with Full Text searching that prevented me from importing those big (and no doubt beautiful) sample DB’s that MS makes available,
this post (YOURS) is/was EXTREMELY HELPFUL. Thanks!!

176. on March 24, 2009 at 1:39 am | Reply Dmitriy Zasyatkin

Thank you very much! This was very helpful.

177. on March 26, 2009 at 10:44 pm | Reply UK Landfill

Hi,

I’m trying to upload a file to my database and it wont work at all, I get this message:

#1064 – You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘BULK INSERT
tblPostcodes FROM ‘c:\postcodes.txt’ WITH ( FIELDTERMINATOR’ at line 1

when I run:

BULK
INSERT tblPostcodes
FROM ‘c:\postcodes.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

Any ideas?

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178. on March 31, 2009 at 4:52 pm | Reply AMIT

well i try to upload the csv file throgh the below given query

BULK
INSERT CSVTest
FROM ‘c:\CSVTEST.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘|’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

but it is showing error message when i ran this above query

the error message is given below:

Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 3

Incorrect syntax near ‘‘’.
Msg 319, Level 15, State 1, Line 4
Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘with’. If this statement is a common table expression or an xmlnamespaces clause, the previous statement must be terminated with a
semicolon.

179. on March 31, 2009 at 4:53 pm | Reply AMIT

well i try to upload the csv file throgh the below given query

BULK
INSERT CSVTest
FROM ‘c:\CSVTEST.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘|’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

but it is showing error message when i ran this above query

the error message is given below:

Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 3

Incorrect syntax near ‘‘’.
Msg 319, Level 15, State 1, Line 4
Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘with’. If this statement is a common table expression or an xmlnamespaces clause, the previous statement must be terminated with a
semicolon.

please tell me why this is happening and pls give me the solution for this

180. on April 1, 2009 at 3:39 pm | Reply Himanshu

ur Bulk insert works as following way: in LAN only

Bulk Insert cv_Test from ‘\\Rahool\SharedDocs\Book2.txt’ with

(
FIELDTERMINATOR= ‘,’,

ROWTERMINATOR= ‘\n’
)
Go

181. on April 1, 2009 at 4:42 pm | Reply Shazad

Thanks this is great.

You are a true guru at sql. This has solved a massive problem.
I was trying to insert a csv into sql express 2005.
Which is witout the import functions. this code solved that problem.

…sqlauthority.com/…/sql-server-import… 41/94
5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…
Thanks a lots!!!

182. on April 2, 2009 at 1:10 am | Reply joel

Hi,

I’m new to SQL, I’m a VoIP engineer. I am trying to create a call billing database. I have a simple table like this
My VOIP server exports out call records as text (comma separated) files everday.

phone,name,callerid,dialednumber
3929,joel,3929,3454
3454,anita,3454,3929

I need to be able to upload data from text files onto the same table. Is there a way to do this and set it to automatically import the text files?

Thanks in advance,
joel

183. on April 2, 2009 at 11:23 am | Reply Viv

hi guys, (newbie / VS2008 pro)

I have a table with 5 columns and a csv with 5 columns which i want to import into table.

I have used your code as above to import CSV into table and I get ERROR message :

There was an error parsing the Query. [Token line number =1, token line offset =1, Token in error = BULK]

what does this mean ?

not sure if i am in the right area but am in the Server Explorer window, right clicked on database name then selected
‘New Query” ( is this right ?)

also, i can’t find DTS in the \bin folder ?\ of VS2008/ SSME

thanks in advance
viv (frustrated)

184. on April 2, 2009 at 1:28 pm | Reply Tejas Shah

Hi,

Please look at this: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/transactsql/thread/76562a3b-4a98-4ede-9937-e2319699d866

Let me know if it helps you.

Thanks,

Tejas

185. on April 3, 2009 at 11:52 am | Reply Viv

Hi Tejas,

I actually need help with the error below when ever i try to run the query ?

“There was an error parsing the Query. [Token line number =1, token line offset =1, Token in error = BULK] ”

please help

(VS2008 Pro)

thanks
viv

on March 30, 2010 at 5:02 pm | Reply Madhivanan

…sqlauthority.com/…/sql-server-import… 42/94
5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…
The code provided in this site will work only in SQL Server and not in Mysql

186. on April 3, 2009 at 1:24 pm | Reply Tejas Shah

Hi,

Could you give me any sample data?

So I can try my own and let you know.

Thanks,

Tejas

187. on April 4, 2009 at 7:20 pm | Reply BobS

Is there a way using DTS or SSIS to easily pick up and import in reoccurring delimited files.
They are very simple files with about 10 pipe delimited fields that very easily import in manually. They are placed in a directory by another business process and contain a
unique DateTimeStamp filename. All of the current current BCP or Import tasks I see in either 2000 or 2005 force you to select a specific filename rather than a wild card. I
understand that I will have to deal with moving the files also as they are processed which there appears to be a file operations task I could use. I thought for sure that this would
be a commonly needed slam dunk task to perform in DTS or SSIS, but right now feel like just writing a small custom app. to do it. Any insight you have to offer would be
greatly appreciated. Thanks!

188. on April 10, 2009 at 10:11 pm | Reply Dorian

Hi there,
sorry I’m new to SQL Server.

I was wandering to load the ASCII file into SQL Server table with this code:

BULK
INSERT CSVTest
FROM ‘c:\csvtest.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

c:\csvtest.txt’ refers to the file in the same filesystem with the SQL Server or they can be on different boxes?

Thanks

189. on April 12, 2009 at 11:23 pm | Reply Vishwanath Raju

Dear Pinal,
I still have a problem I want to use the same bulk insert query by passing the filename as a parameter since I dont want to hard code it in the query is it possible??

declare @filename varchar(100)

set @filename = ”” + ‘C:\test.txt’ + ””;
bulk insert vishu_test
from @filename
with
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)

on March 17, 2010 at 2:54 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Try

declare @sql varchar(1000), @filename varchar(100)

…sqlauthority.com/…/sql-server-import… 43/94
5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…
set @filemame='C:\test.txt'
set @sq='BULK INSERT vishu_test
FROM '''+@FileName+'''
WITH ( FIELDTERMINATOR='';'', ROWTERMINATOR=''\\n'')'
EXEC(@sql)

190. on April 13, 2009 at 10:57 am | Reply Imran Mohammed

@ Vishwanath,

Yes, Of-course it is possible. What you need to do is store whole script into another variable and execute that variable. something like this,

declare @SQLCMD varchar(1000)

declare @filename varchar(100)
set @filename =‘C:\test.txt’

set @SQLCMD = ‘
bulk insert vishu_test
from ‘+@filename+’
with
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘‘,’’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘‘\n’’
)’

Print @SQLCMD

Exec (@SQLCMD)

191. on April 14, 2009 at 11:18 pm | Reply Savatar

declare @SQLCMD nvarchar(1000)

declare @filename nvarchar(100)
set @filename =‘C:\test.txt’

set @SQLCMD = ‘
bulk insert vishu_test
from ‘+@filename+’
with
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘‘,’’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘‘\n’’
)’

Print @SQLCMD

exec sp_executesql @sql(@SQLCMD)

This method is recommended as it prevents and SQLInjection…

192. on April 21, 2009 at 7:27 pm | Reply Jon

Hi,

I wonder if anyone can help. I’m trying to get a bulk data import to mssql but I want to have the file name also included in one of the colums. Also i’m trying to get the importer
to import any file name .txt file int he import folder. Is this possible? here is my script:
BULK

INSERT orders

FROM ‘c:\imp\test3.txt’

WITH

firstrow=2,

FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
…sqlauthority.com/…/sql-server-import… 44/94
5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…

ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’

193. on April 21, 2009 at 7:29 pm | Reply Jon

is there a wildcard for the filename? something like FROM ‘c:\imp\*.txt’

on March 16, 2010 at 1:17 pm | Reply Madhivanan

No. That is not supported

194. on April 22, 2009 at 12:46 pm | Reply Aji

hello……..
using this i can insert the contents of csv file to sql.but the last row was not added into the table……

BULK INSERT portf FROM ‘E:\\portfolio\\WebSite2\\grouped\\2007\1\\EQ020107.CSV’

WITH (FORMATFILE=’C:\\Documents and Settings\\user\\portfol.fmt’,FIRSTROW=2)

Have any solution for this problem?

195. on April 26, 2009 at 4:20 pm | Reply Aftab Yo!

This is really a very simple a good article. Informative indeed.

Thanks for the help and keep up the good work!

Good Luck!

ComputerVideos.110mb.com/

196. on April 27, 2009 at 9:31 am | Reply Oded Dror

Pinal Hi,

Based on your example how do you insert multiple txt files

Like
C:\csvtest1.txt
C:\csvtest2.txt
C:\csvtest3.txt

to the csvtest table in sql

Thank you very much.

Oded Dror

197. on April 28, 2009 at 4:30 am | Reply Jason

Thanks! This worked splendidly.

198. on April 29, 2009 at 7:48 pm | Reply vineet

This is a great example to start. I am facing only one problem

How can i Skip Header while inserting CSV or Tab Seperated Values. B’Cause my TXT files consisting Header informations as well.

That would be great help..Thanks

…sqlauthority.com/…/sql-server-import… 45/94
5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…

on March 15, 2010 at 3:03 pm | Reply Madhivanan

You can skip the column names by using FIRST_ROW option

BULK INSERT …. FROM …

WITH
(
FIRST_ROW=2,
FIELDTERMINATOR =’ |’,
ROWTERMINATOR =’ |\n’
)

199. on April 30, 2009 at 9:11 pm | Reply Amit

Hi Pinal

I followed your bulk insert and it worked perfectly. But I was trying a couple of other things which did not work for me. Basically I want to auto increment the primary key by
1, instead of storing 1,2,3…… in csv file

Eg: my csv file looks like this

James,Smith
Meggie,Smith
Robert,Smith
Alex,Smith

and my table looks like this

csvinsert(id int identity(1,1), fname varchar(20), lname varchar(20), primary key(id))

Now when I follow your commands it gives me dataconversion error as it is trying to insert a string in id column. What can I do to make this work?

on March 30, 2010 at 7:37 pm | Reply Madhivanan

You need to skip the identity column from being updated

Refer this to skip the column
http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan/archive/2010/03/17/bulk-insert-to-table-with-specific-columns.aspx

200. on May 7, 2009 at 4:39 am | Reply KC

If I have a file:
“1″,”James”,”Smith”,”19750101″,,

“2″,”Meggie,Smith”,”19790122″,”A”,

“3″,”Robert,Smith”,”20071101″,”B”

“4″,”Alex”,”Smith”,”20040202″,,

How can I do it. (import to SQL tables)

Thanks,

201. on May 13, 2009 at 4:45 pm | Reply Linto

Thank you very much, pinaldave your site is very appricated the fresh candidates also

202. on May 13, 2009 at 6:14 pm | Reply 24x7x365

Hi,

Try like this

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5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…
BULK INSERT TmpStList FROM ‘c:\TxtFile1.txt’ WITH (FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘”,”‘)

Ref : http://www.sqlteam.com/article/using-bulk-insert-to-load-a-text-file

Thanks,
24×7

203. on May 15, 2009 at 9:03 am | Reply Celine GVS

You need to use Format File to import CSV file

204. on May 21, 2009 at 5:35 am | Reply Pwzeus

Awesome article , exactly what I wanted.

205. on May 21, 2009 at 8:11 am | Reply Aisurya

hi pinal,

please help me to insert data/multiple data in a csv using VBA.

thanks in advance

Plz help me yaar

206. on May 25, 2009 at 9:44 pm | Reply Harjinder

Hi
You do not need to do anything . Just design a table right click and click import data select csv file and thats it. No need to do programming and stuff if its one time only.

207. on May 30, 2009 at 1:26 pm | Reply emmy

hi there,
can you tell me how to make update to the database from the text file.the text file i have is a buffer(log file) from finger print machine.i don’t want to save a text file every time i
collect the data from the device.should i make a trigger or what.is there any other way??.
other thing:how to insert the data into db from the device?

208. on June 3, 2009 at 2:37 pm | Reply Rajeev

Thank u a lot, my friend……..

209. on June 3, 2009 at 4:25 pm | Reply venkatesh

Explained in a simple manner. Good one

210. on June 8, 2009 at 1:52 pm | Reply srinivas

Please help urgent,

While runnning BULK INSERT statement, i am getting error

Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘with’. If this statement is a common table expression or an xmlnamespaces clause, the previous statement must be terminated with a
semicolon.

…sqlauthority.com/…/sql-server-import… 47/94
5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…

211. on June 9, 2009 at 5:02 pm | Reply wiras

why we cannot do bulk insert to temporary or variable tables?

on March 30, 2010 at 7:43 pm | Reply Madhivanan

You can bulk insert to temporary table however bulk insert to table variable is not allowed

212. on June 11, 2009 at 2:28 am | Reply DNJ

Hi,

I ve to load a table with 600000 records to excel. How do i do it.

213. on June 11, 2009 at 10:52 am | Reply Hasan

Can anyone help me load a file through bulk insert that has a date and time appended in its name with first part of the name remaining constant and the date time part being
variable everyday.

something like this:

bulk insert dbo.tablename

from ‘filename*.txt’
etc.

here the filename is the first part

and
datetime part denoted by * is the variable part

214. on June 12, 2009 at 8:23 am | Reply Imran Mohammed

@DNJ

Definitely I would go for DTS / SSIS. That is way faster than any other tool, faster than Database Engine.

~ IM.

215. on June 12, 2009 at 8:30 am | Reply Imran Mohammed

@Hasan

You need to write Dynamic SQL.

By Using Dynamic SQL, first prepare bulk insert script with proper file name.

Consider below script as a sample for your requirement.

Declare @sqlcmd1 varchar(1000)

set @sqlcmd1 = ‘bulk insert dbo.tablename
from filename’+convert(varchar, datename(yyyy, getdate())) + convert(varchar, datepart(mm, getdate()))+convert(varchar, datename(d, getdate()))

Execute Sp_ExecuteSql @sqlcmd1

~ IM.

216. on June 24, 2009 at 4:55 pm | Reply murugan

hai thanks.
your code helps realy good

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217. on June 29, 2009 at 5:37 pm | Reply xyz

Thanks

218. on June 30, 2009 at 12:30 pm | Reply prashanthi

Hi,

Thanks for the post.It was very helpful.

I tried it.It is working.But i need to do it for only desired columns(not for all the column).
Can anybody suggest me.

219. on July 10, 2009 at 4:01 pm | Reply saswata

Hi Prashanti,
you have to explore the area of using the FORMATFILE = ‘format_file_path’ for bulk insert to do it for desired columns.

Some text fr

The format file should be used if:

1.The data file contains greater or fewer columns than the table or view.
2.The columns are in a different order.
3.The column delimiters vary.

There are other changes in the data format. Format files are typically created by using the bcp utility and modified with a text editor as needed. For more information, see bcp
Utility.

Regards,
Saswata

220. on July 12, 2009 at 7:17 am | Reply imran

Can someone plz help me.Its keep telling me that incorrect syntax whereas im using the exact command.
bulk insert dbo.Orders
from ‘C:\Data\orders.txt’
with
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
Incorrect syntax near ‘‘’.
Dont know whats wrong.

221. on July 12, 2009 at 10:08 pm | Reply kisha

Can someone please help me with the following. I have a csv file that I’m trying to load into sql.

The 1st line in the file contains IDs, 2nd line – user account and remaining lines contains the change info.

Example:

1234,2586
dom\hope,dom\newberry,dom\ksayr,dom\farley
11111,1,23
11111,2,187
11111,3,9687

I broke it down to three separate bulk inserts. However, I’m having problems with the user accounts insert.

CREATE TABLE #USER

(
#1 varchar (100)
)
BULK INSERT #USER
FROM ‘C:\Documents and Settings\Nakisha\FIRST\1064PBF01.csv’
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WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’,
FIRSTROW = 2,
LASTROW = 2
)

With the script above “dom\hope,dom\newberry,dom\ksayr,dom\farley” gets display in the table.

Is there a way to have each user account display in a different row in the table?

Thanks for your help!

222. on July 13, 2009 at 6:53 pm | Reply Babar

@imran;

delete all the single quotes and type again. it should not be like this

‘,’

but like this

‘,’

223. on July 14, 2009 at 5:24 pm | Reply Anonymous

Hi,

I want to know y does the following script run in SQL and not in T-SQL

——————————————————-
DECLARE @tblName varchar(30)
SET @tblName = CONVERT(VARCHAR(20),GETDATE(),112) + ‘Table’

DECLARE @sql nvarchar(4000)

SELECT @sql =
‘CREATE TABLE “‘ + @tblName + ‘”
(
ID VARCHAR(15),
Name VARCHAR(15)
)’

EXEC(@sql)
go
——————————————————-

it gives you the error

Msg 170, Sev 15: Line 1: Incorrect syntax near ’20090714Table’. [SQLSTATE 42000]

224. on July 19, 2009 at 12:28 am | Reply Allan

Re:

Anonymous

Hi,

I want to know y does the following script run in SQL and not in T-SQL

——————————————————-
DECLARE @tblName varchar(30)
SET @tblName = CONVERT(VARCHAR(20),GETDATE(),112) + ‘Table’

DECLARE @sql nvarchar(4000)

SELECT @sql =
‘CREATE TABLE “‘ + @tblName + ‘”
(

…sqlauthority.com/…/sql-server-import… 50/94
5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…
ID VARCHAR(15),
Name VARCHAR(15)
)’

EXEC(@sql)
go
——————————————————-

it gives you the error

Msg 170, Sev 15: Line 1: Incorrect syntax near ‘20090714Table’. [SQLSTATE 42000]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MY REPLY:

This error is being generated by T-SQL because you are trying to create a table with a digit as the first character of its name.

225. on July 19, 2009 at 12:51 am | Reply Allan

Re:

imran

Can someone plz help me.Its keep telling me that incorrect syntax whereas im using the exact command.
bulk insert dbo.Orders
from ‘C:\Data\orders.txt’
with
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
Incorrect syntax near ‘‘’.
Dont know whats wrong.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MY REPLY:

T-SQL is reading the first row of your data file (C:\data\orders.txt) as data. If this row contains column headings, then you want T-SQL to begin reading on the second row.
Therefore, you should add FIRSTROW = 2 below the ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’, statement.

226. on July 19, 2009 at 12:59 am | Reply Allan

@DNJ

I agree with Imran, with an additional comment; you can not insert 600,000 records into Excel in versions prior to Excel 2007.

227. on July 21, 2009 at 12:51 pm | Reply pramod

Hi All,

please continue the thread instead of raising the another question.

228. on July 22, 2009 at 6:24 pm | Reply Johan

I read the article, but I have a question too. I’m trying with bulkcopy to copy data from an excelsheet to my DB.
In one column there is the telephonenumber in different formats: 012-3456789, or 0123-456789 or 00321234567890. The first two are seen as text but the last is seen as
number and won’t be insert into my table on the DB. My column in the db table is a varchar, all data can go into there.
Can anybody help me how I can solve this problemn?

Greetings,
Johan

229. on July 23, 2009 at 10:00 am | Reply Imran Mohammed

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@Johan,

You first load data into temporary table, in this temporary table make the data type of the column compatible with Excel Sheet i.e. nvarchar(255). Once data is in Temporary
table, then you can play as you want.

I believe SSIS has a functionality in which you could change data type of column. I am not sure.

~ IM.

230. on July 23, 2009 at 10:14 am | Reply Satish Kumar J

Thanks for ur query. It worked me a lot.

Thank u very much

Satish

231. on July 23, 2009 at 12:26 pm | Reply Johan

@Imran Mohammed

Do you have some sample code for me? I searched all along the internet but I couldn’t find any good sample code.

Thank you very much

Johan

232. on July 24, 2009 at 2:20 am | Reply Chris

What do you do for commas WITHIN text qualifiers?

233. on July 24, 2009 at 11:50 am | Reply Krishna

Hi Pinal

Please help me
Iam using sql server 2005,..I want to do a similar operation..

I have my file in C:\Test.txt. Also I create the table in my DB.

BULK INSERT CSVTest

FROM ‘c:\Test.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘\t’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

When I run this …am getting error saying…

Cannot bulk load. The file “c:\Test.txt” does not exist.

infact, I have the file given in the path.

Thanks,

Krishna

234. on July 24, 2009 at 3:29 pm | Reply Tejas Shah

Hi Krishna,

Please make sure file is on the same PC where SQL server is installed, not on client location.

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Thanks,

Tejas

235. on August 4, 2009 at 10:09 pm | Reply schwaps

@Tejas Shah

Awesome suggestion. I was having the same issue as Krishna and forgot that I had SQL server installed to a different box.

Thanks,

Justin

236. on August 5, 2009 at 12:57 am | Reply Alec

I’m trying to do just like this but in Sybase. Will anyone share the code?? Does Sybase has something like this?

237. on August 17, 2009 at 7:40 pm | Reply Nandu

Is it possible to import xls file this way?

238. on August 18, 2009 at 11:09 am | Reply Bless

Thank you, Its working I had tried good time with it.
God Bless You!!!

239. on August 21, 2009 at 12:54 pm | Reply Rajiv Singh

Dear Pinal,

I am also SQL Server DBA professional since last 4 years and before that i have worked as a SQL developper cum Database Analyst also using .Net 2.0 Frame work For
Web & Consol based Application and VB 6.0 for Window based application.

Thanks for your articles, As your faster way to writing your articles sometimes you have to do mistakes like

–Drop the table to clean up database.

SELECT *
FROM CSVTest
GO

Inyour image file seems fine

Go

DROP TABLE CSVTest

–Drop the table to clean up database.
GO

I think you have need to have a look once of all your articles.

Regards,
Rajiv Singh

240. on August 31, 2009 at 5:46 pm | Reply Anitha

Hi Pinal,

If I execute the below query

BULK INSERT InsertTest
FROM ‘D:\Test.txt’
WITH ( FormatFile=’D:\Test.fmt’)

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Getting error as

Msg 4832, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Bulk load: An unexpected end of file was encountered in the data file.
Msg 7399, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
The OLE DB provider “BULK” for linked server “(null)” reported an error. The provider did not give any information about the error.
Msg 7330, Level 16, State 2, Line 1
Cannot fetch a row from OLE DB provider “BULK” for linked server “(null)”.

Can you help me out how to solve this?

Regards,
Anitha

241. on September 24, 2009 at 7:13 am | Reply ramakrishnan

I have tried it with C:\ drive on local machine, BUT it does not work for local machine, works ONLY if the file is on the Server.

so your @filename on the bulk insert would look something like

\\\\filename.csv OR filename.txt

BULK INSERT does not work for excel files.

You have to save EXCEL file as CSV and then use it with the
bulk insert sql command.

PS:There is another option to use OPENROWSET to upload excel sheet data as follows:

select * from
OPENROWSET(‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′, ‘Excel 8.0;Database=c:\’, ‘SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]‘)

BUT for which you need to have Microsoft.Jet.OLDEDB correctly

installed & all drivers in OK status, else it fails.

Hope it helps.

242. on September 25, 2009 at 10:47 am | Reply prasad

good one……..

how to store text file in oracle 8i………..

on March 15, 2010 at 3:40 pm | Reply Madhivanan

You should post this question at ORACLE forums such as http://www.orafaq.com

243. on September 29, 2009 at 1:19 pm | Reply SAF

Thanks buddy :-)

244. on October 1, 2009 at 1:31 pm | Reply KAPIL

Thanku very much

BULK
INSERT testing_table
FROM ‘c:\testing.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

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5/3/2011 SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQ…
Above code works.. and this is exactly what i was searching for…

245. on October 8, 2009 at 6:35 am | Reply Ct

hi!
its really work..thank so much
if you dont mind I would like to ask, how to filter certain data in the csv file during the insertion?

Tq.

246. on October 21, 2009 at 12:39 pm | Reply Prabu

How to bulk upload text file. That text file having fixed length format. I want to upload with length specification. in sql server 2005. Can any one help me?….

prabu

247. on October 28, 2009 at 6:58 pm | Reply Hasmukh

sir, currently i am developing a windows application where all the file of extension .xls (excel format) must be saved in to the database
i mean to say the content MUST SAVED INTO DATABASE
and condition is that the content is not maintained as row or column

PLS REPLY

THANKS
HASMUKH JAIN

248. on November 10, 2009 at 5:40 pm | Reply Özgür S.

Hello. It solved my problem too. But I have an another problem.

It converts the characters “ş,Ş,ç,Ç,ö,Ö,ü,Ü,ğ,Ğ,ı,İ” to unreadable characters. How can I solve it?

249. on November 13, 2009 at 4:19 am | Reply david

hI,

Im seriously in need of help, ive looked into many options including dts and bcp but ive not had any joy

250. on November 13, 2009 at 4:31 am | Reply david

sorry, too quick on the submit button!

Im seriously in need of help, ive looked into many options including dts and bcp but ive not had any joy.

my txt file is formated in the following way

|fname1|,|26/02/03|,|lname1|
|fname2|,|26/02/03|,|lname2|
|fname3|,|27/02/03|,|lname3|

and so on…

Ive tried the following but the data is not being added correctly. I dont want to search and replace stuff in the file becuase i have 100′s of files with 10,000′s rows to deal with.
Please help.

thanks.
D

BULK
INSERT tblTest
FROM ‘c:\Feb03Names.txt’
WITH

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(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘|’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘|\n’
)

The following is what gets stored in the db when running the above code.
ID Name RegDate Lname
1 fname1 , 26/02/03|,|lname1
2 fname2 , 26/02/03|,|lname2
3 fname3 , 27/02/03|,|lname3|

251. on December 1, 2009 at 2:47 pm | Reply Goran

Thank you so much! Simple, yet elegant solution, just what I needed!!

252. on December 2, 2009 at 8:06 pm | Reply SAMY

BULK
INSERT CHUMMA.DBO.PRODUCTS
FROM ‘E:\INSERT.CSV’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR=’,',
ROWTERMINATOR=’\n’
)
GO

When I run this …am getting error saying…

Msg 4832, Level 16, State 1, Line 189

Bulk load: An unexpected end of file was encountered in the data file.
Msg 7399, Level 16, State 1, Line 189
The OLE DB provider “BULK” for linked server “(null)” reported an error. The provider did not give any information about the error.
Msg 7330, Level 16, State 2, Line 189
Cannot fetch a row from OLE DB provider “BULK” for linked server “(null)”.

253. on December 3, 2009 at 3:01 pm | Reply sunil singh

hi this is sunil singh

i m college student
i have project, pls help me with this.

I want to import excel sheet with has three column,

First Name Last Name Date Of Birth

has 30 rows

and i have assigment

to convert all data in Sql data base file Name “Student Info”
with one single sql command.

pls reply mee

254. on December 3, 2009 at 6:43 pm | Reply Tejas Shah

Hi Sunil,

Please find h ttp://www.sqlyoga.com/2009/12/sql-server-how-to-read-excel-file-by.html

Thanks,

Tejas
SQLYoga.com

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255. on December 9, 2009 at 5:44 am | Reply Miki

company: xxxxxxxx
ssno: xxx-xx-xxxx

identification no:xxxx

1 fname1 , 26/02/03|,|lname1
2 fname2 , 26/02/03|,|lname2
3 fname3 , 27/02/03|,|lname3
———————————————————————-

Above is the file format in txt. I simply need to grab in row per record like below:

company,ssno,fname1,date,lname1
company,ssno,fname2,date,lname2 and so on….

How can I parse and import the data from .txt to sql 2005. Please help and reply me at [email protected]

Thanks.
Miki

on December 9, 2009 at 8:16 pm | Reply Brian Tkatch

@miki

what have you done so far?

256. on December 9, 2009 at 9:16 pm | Reply Sharan

Hi friends,

I want to do Bulk Insert in my table. The actual senario is , I have written a stored procedure which does some calculation and Insert the row in my table.

Stored procedure takes one second to do its calculation and insert operation.
I have around One crores of records to be inserted in my table.

If i do use of above store procedure it will take , 1 sec * No of Rows(1 crore) to be inserted.

So how can i go with Batch insert to achieve this.

Please help.

Thanks,

Sharan

257. on December 10, 2009 at 2:19 am | Reply Pinal Dave

Hello Sharan,

If possible, try to implement the calculation on the whole source rowset instead of processing the rows one by one. SQL Server engine is optimzed to perform SET based.

Kind Regards,
Pinal Dave

258. on December 15, 2009 at 2:52 pm | Reply kailash chand

Dear i have a project result4u.com in that i add many school and university i want give a penal to each user by that they can add result by excel file. just like 10th class or 12th
class or B.A Iyear,or M.Com…….many…. in that i want to upload excel file in sql dynamically if i upload a excel file then that file save in sql and create table in sql
dynamically….bcos different-2 excel upload hogi in that all details will be there like Roll no, name, address, subject,hindi ,english…..

so plz help me how it come possible excel file save directly in sql dynamically create table…

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259. on December 17, 2009 at 11:46 am | Reply sejal

I’m trying to do an import from a text file using the BULK INSERT. The text file is separated by fixed width (no delimiters).

Can anybody give me an example query for this?

260. on December 18, 2009 at 9:40 pm | Reply Kevin HARMON

Hi Mr. Pinal,

I have a flat ascii file with tabs to delimit all the columns, within each column is text or dates, text is delimited by the quotes as seen in sample A below. I can import into ms sql
with bulk insert just fine, except I want to strip the quotes off so that the final row in the sql database looks like example B. Here is my code;
BULK INSERT dbo.NC_Voter_History
FROM “C:\Users\Kevin\Documents\NC Folder\NC_His\his1-50.txt”
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘\t’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO
What can I add to strip off the “quotes” at bulk insert?
Thanks, Kevin

Sample A:

89 “TYRRELL” “000000000002″ 23 2002-11-05 00:00:00 “11/05/2002″ “11/05/2002 GENERAL ” “IN-PERSON ” “DEM” “DEMOCRATIC ” “14″ “KILKENNY”
“EE2035″ 89 “TYRRELL”——- “14″ “14″

Sample B:

89 TYRRELL 000000000002 23 2002-11-05 00:00:00 11/05/2002 11/05/2002 GENERAL IN-PERSON DEM DEMOCRATIC 14 KILKENNY EE2035 89
TYRRELL 14 14

261. on December 22, 2009 at 4:47 pm | Reply bari

Hi,
I get the error like this
Msg 4860, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Cannot bulk load. The file “c:\book1.txt” does not exist.
It ll be very helpfull if anyone can solve this problem.
Thanks in advance.

on December 23, 2009 at 8:31 pm | Reply Fayyaz

bari looks like windows security issue, sql user does not have access on file system on your local machine..

262. on December 24, 2009 at 4:32 pm | Reply Rohidas

Thanks for your it’s a very usefull

263. on December 31, 2009 at 7:01 am | Reply SQLAuthority News – 1200th Post – An Important Milestone Journey to SQL Authority with Pinal Dave

[...] Stored Procedure, Functions, Triggers, Tables, Views, Constraints and All Other Database Objects 5) SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQL Server Using Bulk
Insert – Load Comma Delimited File Into …6) SQL SERVER – Retrieve Current Date Time in SQL Server CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, GETDATE(), {fn NOW()} [...]

264. on December 31, 2009 at 8:52 am | Reply Chirag

Hy all!

nice artical on bulk insert.

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I have a existing table in database, on which i want to apply bulk insert. but the thing is can filter apply on bulk insert? i want to avoid the duplication, if record already exist then
i want to overright. is this possible with bulk insert? I have datafile with millions record.

pls. Answer …

thanks in Advance.

265. on December 31, 2009 at 9:00 am | Reply Chirag

Hy pinal!

In sql, we often notice that if any error occred, it will print the message “Msg xxxx, Level 16( or 15), State 1, Line xx.”

What is the meaning of level16 (or 15), how many levels in Sql? and what the state indicate?

Pls. Answer

Chirag

266. on December 31, 2009 at 3:27 pm | Reply Pinal Dave

Hi Chirag,

Any error in SQL Server can have a Level value from 0 through 25 and a State value from 0 through 255.

Level is severity level that represent the severity of error from least severity (level 0) to most criticle (level 25).
For more information please view the article:

http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2007/04/25/sql-server-error-messages-sysmessages-error-severity-level/

State represnt a value that can be used to identify the source location or reason of error. For example an error like “Disk full” can be caused by various source location (like
data file, log file or tempdb). As the error is same so we would not be able to identify the exact source of error just by error message. To help in identify the exact reason of
error SQL Server have State that would be different for each locationi or reason (like data file, log file or tempdb).

Regards,
Pinal Dave

267. on January 5, 2010 at 12:58 pm | Reply lucky

Thanks a lot..

268. on January 6, 2010 at 3:19 am | Reply kchusa

Kevin HARMON
Hi Mr. Pinal,

I have a flat ascii file with tabs to delimit all the columns, within each column is text or dates, text is delimited by the quotes as seen in sample A below. I can import into ms sql
with bulk insert just fine, except I want to strip the quotes off so that the final row in the sql database looks like example B. Here is my code;
BULK INSERT dbo.NC_Voter_History
FROM “C:\Users\Kevin\Documents\NC Folder\NC_His\his1-50.txt”
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘\t’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO
What can I add to strip off the “quotes” at bulk insert?
Thanks, Kevin

Sample A:

89 “TYRRELL” “000000000002″ 23 2002-11-05 00:00:00 “11/05/2002″ “11/05/2002 GENERAL ” “IN-PERSON ” “DEM” “DEMOCRATIC ” “14″ “KILKENNY”
“EE2035″ 89 “TYRRELL”——- “14″ “14″

Sample B:

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89 TYRRELL 000000000002 23 2002-11-05 00:00:00 11/05/2002 11/05/2002 GENERAL IN-PERSON DEM DEMOCRATIC 14 KILKENNY EE2035 89
TYRRELL 14 14

269. on January 6, 2010 at 12:26 pm | Reply Pinal Dave

Hello Kchusa,

BCP does not have any predefined option to remove double quote from column data. For this purpose you can use format file. In format file specify the double quote in field
terminator.
Another option is to use SSIS or Import/Export wizard. In wizard we have option to specify Text Indentifier.

Regards,
Pinal Dave

270. on January 8, 2010 at 4:34 pm | Reply Rameshkumar.T

Hi,

Thanks your document.

This is very useful.

Regards

Rameshkumar.T

271. on January 9, 2010 at 2:51 am | Reply Rajesh

Hello,

I would like to insert records from CSV file into SQL table in SQL Server 2005. But I do not have permission for BULK INSERT command. Is there any other way I can
insert records from CSV file into SQL table?

Your help is very well appreciated.

Thanks

272. on January 12, 2010 at 11:45 am | Reply amarnath

To create a job (balance sheet) where the total >7000 sheet must be updated to NUll and this process must be done for every 30 min

Plz help me out

273. on January 12, 2010 at 7:35 pm | Reply Kapil

Kapil

I think that this query is only work when the database and the text file on the same system.
If yes then pls tell me how can we achieve this when the database and the text file both are on different system.

274. on January 13, 2010 at 2:44 am | Reply Alex

Hi Pinal,

I is there are a way to run an Update Statement from an excel or csv file into the database. I am using SQL 2000 and i need to update tables in from a csv file to save time i
been lookin some examples but they are mainly insert statements can you give a some help/. I am using Coldfusion 8 front end if that helps any..

thanks in advance.

275. on January 13, 2010 at 11:06 pm | Reply Pinal Dave

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Hi Alex,

We can handle data from csv file as a table using OPENDATASOURCE function. So using this function join the csv file with database table and update the table.

Regards,
Pinal Dave

276. on January 15, 2010 at 12:11 am | Reply Kapil

Hi Pinal,

I am not sure; May be this query is only work when the database server and the text file on the same system.
If yes, Please tell me how can we achieve this when both the database and the text file are on different system.

thanks in Advance.

on January 15, 2010 at 3:21 pm | Reply Pinal Dave

Hello Kapil,

The OPENDATASOURCE function can access file or database tables from remote server. But what there are many possible reason that you may not access a remote
file like access permission, version of your SQL server instance, version of your source file, etc.
What error are your getting while accessing from remote computer?

Regards,
Pinal Dave

on January 15, 2010 at 8:39 pm | Reply Kapil

Hello Pinal,
Its nice to see your reply; when I am executing the bulk insert query then its gives this error

Msg 4860, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Cannot bulk load. The file “d:\\csvtest.txt” does not exist.

—————————————————————-
I am running the below query

BULK INSERT Tmp_GpMember

FROM ‘d:\test.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

—————————————————————-
Table definition
create table Tmp_GpMember ( int Number not null)

—————————————————————-
File Contains this data with file name test.txt
13
23
23
45
—————————————————————-

The text File is on my computer with Sql Server 2008 Client version installation which connect to the database server which is on another computer.

on January 16, 2010 at 6:20 pm | Reply Pinal Dave

Hi Kapil,

File path is searched on computer where SQL Server instance is running. Give the file path relative to server system.

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Regards,
Pinal Dave

on January 20, 2010 at 4:53 am Kapil

Hi Pinal,

You Means I have to give the path like Ipaddress//d:/test.txt.

BULK INSERT Tmp_GpMember

FROM ‘192.168.1.182\\d:\test.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

I ran the above query but also it gives the error.

on March 30, 2010 at 8:22 pm Madhivanan

Try this code

BULK INSERT Tmp_GpMember

FROM &#\\39;192.168.1.182\d\test.txt'
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ',',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
)
GO

277. on January 15, 2010 at 8:12 am | Reply Mayur

Hello Pinal,

Can we load the data from one csv to multiple tables ?

If the CSV contains a heder and trailer and i want to store trailer in some table is that possible with BCP..

e.x.
Fname,Lname,Empid,Location —–>Header
Mayur,Mittal,1011739,SRE
John,Mathews,103333,PUNE
Sherlok,Holmes,100007,USA
000003 ——->Trailer (Containg the nu of records)

Can i store the trailer in some table ?

on March 30, 2010 at 8:27 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Use OPENROWSET

insert into target_table(column_list)

select * from OPENROWSET('Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0','text;HDR=no;FMT=FixedLength;Database=c:\', text_file#txt)
where f1 like '[a-zA-Z]%'

insert into count_table(col)

select f1 from OPENROWSET('Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0','text;HDR=no;FMT=FixedLength;Database=c:\', text_file#txt)
where f1 like '[0-9]%'

278. on January 15, 2010 at 2:46 pm | Reply Hessa

Hi Pinal ,
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I wanna Import CSV file to SQL 2005 (VB.NET)
if the record exist ,,over write it otherwise insert the record

so how can I read data from CSV, fill it with data set
then process each row individually

please help me as soon as possible ,,,

279. on January 16, 2010 at 2:20 pm | Reply Ashwini

Greate job….

Thanks for the document…

With regards,

Ashwini.

280. on January 16, 2010 at 3:34 pm | Reply sejal

hi pinal,
when i am executing openrowset query like this
select * from
OPENROWSET(‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′, ‘Excel 8.0;Database=d:\MCX11012010.xls’,'SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]‘)

for import excel file into sql server table then its gives this error

Cannot process the object “SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]“. The OLE DB provider “Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0″ for linked server “(null)” indicates that either the object has no
columns or the current user does not have permissions on that object.

on March 15, 2010 at 3:46 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Make sure the file is located at the Server’s location

Also the file should be closed at the time of executing the query. For more informations and troubleshooting refer this post
http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=49926

281. on January 24, 2010 at 10:29 pm | Reply paresh

this code is realy very help ful to me.

tahnk u very very much

282. on January 27, 2010 at 7:14 pm | Reply Gary Hanson

I am very new to this and notice that you said “Load Comma Delimited File Into SQL Server”. Our hosted web site has 2 servers a Web server and SQL server. I am working
on importing into the SQL server from a csv file on the WEB server. Is this possible or do I have to move the csv file over to the SQL server? I am told that the bulk import will
only run from the SQL server. Both servers are behind the same firewall. I don’t think it is good practice to SFTP into the SQL server from outside the firewall.

283. on January 28, 2010 at 4:04 pm | Reply jerome

It is really a simple but great share !

Thank You,
Jerome

284. on January 30, 2010 at 12:00 am | Reply numerobis

Hi,

I’m using SQL2005 Express and It seems that FILE_FORMAT

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do not behave like “FieldTerminator” spec.

BULK INSERT [dbo].[DimCurrency]

FROM ‘D:\currencies.csv’
WITH (
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
=> Works fine

BULK INSERT [dbo].[DimCurrency]

FROM ‘D:\currencies.csv’
WITH (
FORMATFILE = ‘D:\Currency.fmt’
)
=> The bulk load failed. The column is too long in the data file for row 1, column 2.

Format file is produced thanks to bcp

9.0
3
1 SQLINT 0 4 “,” 1 CurrencyKey “”
2 SQLNCHAR 2 6 “,” 2 CurrencyAlternateKey SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
3 SQLNCHAR 2 100 “\n” 3 CurrencyName SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS

I’ve tried “\n”, \r\n” same issue..

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

285. on February 10, 2010 at 2:09 am | Reply shitesh

hi this help me bulk insert query but i want same reverce how can i sql server database to cvs.txt file to using query

on March 17, 2010 at 3:06 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Read about bcp in SQL Server help file

286. on February 15, 2010 at 3:44 pm | Reply Kishore

Hi pinal,

I want to import Csv file into my Data base,

My file format is

2,Meggie,Smith,”19790122,19790122″

using the same code , “19790122,19790122″ is getting error,

Please help me out..how to import data from csv file

287. on February 18, 2010 at 4:37 pm | Reply deepak

Thanks a lot. It was quite helpful for us.

288. on February 19, 2010 at 1:11 am | Reply Jeetesh

Hi Pinal,

I have one CSV file.I want to insert only first and last record into sql table using DTS.

I have created one DTS package and click on transformation.Set FirstRow and lastrow Property of OPTION tab and execute Package.It only insert first row into table.

Could you please let me know how to insert last row in to table.

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Thanks,

Jeetesh

289. on February 19, 2010 at 11:20 pm | Reply Tobe

Thanks for your assistance. This helped a lot.

290. on February 20, 2010 at 6:52 am | Reply MJG

I have a question regarding the use of bulk insert to upload a file into a MySQL database. Although the target table ” test_table” exists and the table name is spelt correctly in
the query, I keep on getting the error: “ORA-00903: invalid table name” . Can someone please help?

I use the following following query:

BULK INSERT test_table

FROM ‘C:\Users\l_3.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
;

BULK INSERT test_table

FROM ‘C:\Users\l_3.csv’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
;

291. on February 20, 2010 at 12:41 pm | Reply Ankit

hiiii,

I have txt file in D:\fd.txt and content of this file is like this

1,foo,5,20031101
3,blat,7,20031101
5,foobar,23,20031104
7,ankit,33,20031204

I want to this all data in select statement and sore in dataset and datatable.

like
select * from D:\fd.txt

i want this result in to dataset or datatable

what should i do???

on March 15, 2010 at 3:48 pm | Reply Madhivanan

In your front end, use file system object to interact with text file
This is nothing to do with usage of sql

292. on February 25, 2010 at 12:15 pm | Reply Manojkumar

Hi,

I need to bulk insert from text file, In My text file contains the first line is column names, I need the bulk skip the first line.

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I tried the following script but it doesn’t work.

BULK INSERT member_registration FROM ‘D:\member_registration_2010_02_20.txt’ WITH (FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘|’, FIRSTROW=2, ROWTERMINATOR =
‘\n’)

293. on February 25, 2010 at 3:08 pm | Reply mayur

if i have .csv file inplace of .txt then

294. on February 25, 2010 at 7:38 pm | Reply Pinal Dave

Hello Mayur,

.csv file can be imported as .txt file. Let us know if you are facing any issue.

Regards,
Pinal Dave

on April 23, 2010 at 5:19 am | Reply Samson

Indeed. I used it for .DAT files that were | delimited. Worked beautifully!

FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘|’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’

295. on February 26, 2010 at 8:11 pm | Reply Chirag Shrestha

Is there a difference in the SQL sever processes Bulk insert and import data from SSMS?

296. on February 27, 2010 at 1:28 am | Reply JK

Short & sweet. Got my task done.

297. on February 28, 2010 at 9:23 am | Reply Honorable

Good Post.

Here is my Dillema -

I have a test file with this format:

John, La E*Associate Acc Exe**Inside Sales*

Poll, Pary (LAT)*VP, Prod, forms & Software Services*comapany LAT*LAT Executive*TE640
Kusu, Vas*Software Developer 3**LAT Technology*

how can I insert it to a sql 2008 table?

298. on March 1, 2010 at 11:11 am | Reply Dee

Very helpful indeed, Thanks alot.

Cheers
Dee

299. on March 2, 2010 at 6:05 am | Reply Dee

Can you please explain what the following does,

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(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)

in the bulk insert.

??

Dee

on March 25, 2010 at 1:32 pm | Reply Madhivanan

It means from text file whenever there is a comma, treat it as feild terimator (seperate column), whenever there is newline (\n) treat it as next line (next row)

300. on March 2, 2010 at 9:17 am | Reply Dee

How can I import csv files data using DTS, please assist me with the steps involved.

Thanks

301. on March 2, 2010 at 10:33 pm | Reply Aimee

Hello, could you please help me?

I am a new intern who was assigned a task of importing a flat file into server 2005 and then getting it to update daily. I have figured out the importing part, but I have no idea
where to go from here. I am new to all of this and am just baffled. Basically I have these readings that get taken daily. they are stored in a flat file. I need the database to be able
to go to that flat file and pull the new reading every day. How do I go about doing this correctly? I don’t know if I need to write a script or even how to do it. Please help!

on March 30, 2010 at 8:32 pm | Reply Madhivanan

How will you indentify new data?

Do you have date column as part of text data?

302. on March 3, 2010 at 2:47 pm | Reply nag

This code is help ful for me but i am having one more requirement with this

I have to pass the file name as parameter from front end

can an one give me the syntax for that

thanks in advance……..

303. on March 3, 2010 at 2:50 pm | Reply nag

I tried like the below code but it is showing the error as

“Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘with’. If this statement is a common table expression or an xmlnamespaces clause, the previous statement must be terminated with a
semicolon.”

ALTER PROCEDURE clientdata

@FileName varchar(30)
AS
BEGIN
BULK
INSERT usedoubleauthmode FROM @FileName
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
END

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on March 25, 2010 at 3:25 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Use this

ALTER PROCEDURE clientdata

@FileName varchar(30)
AS
BEGIN

declare @sql varchar(1000)

set @sq='BULK INSERT usedoubleauthmode
FROM ”'+@FileName+”'
WITH ( FIELDTERMINATOR='';”, ROWTERMINATOR=''\\n'')'
EXEC(@sql)

END

304. on March 3, 2010 at 4:51 pm | Reply Kitty

Thanks , this is very useful.

I have some questions about this bulk.
I have the table that has 15 columns and the excel file has 10 fields. I would like to import this excel file and another data into this table. Could I use this bulk for this case? If I
can use this bulk How should I do?

305. on March 7, 2010 at 10:18 am | Reply Sarika

when i was doing the same thing as it had described the above article i tried more then 3 time but it is no taking my first row at all and showing me the error ‘Bulk load data
conversion error (type mismatch or invalid character for the specified codepage) for row 1, column 1 (ID)’
wht can i do for this

306. on March 8, 2010 at 11:58 am | Reply Imran Mohammed

@sarika,

Please provide below information,

What is your Source, Text File or Excel Sheet.

What kind of data are you trying to insert in first column, what is the data type of First column in the destination table.

Try changing datatype of first column in destination table to Nvarchar(255) and then try to do bulkinsert, if data loads into your table then problem is with your source, you
need to format your source and remove invalid characters from your source first column.

~ IM.

307. on March 8, 2010 at 3:40 pm | Reply nag

@Sarika

Hai Sarika…

U r sending the 1st column as int from excel to db, but in db u r not declared that 1st first column as in.

Thanks & Regards

MV Nagarjuna Rao.

308. on March 10, 2010 at 4:33 pm | Reply Deepali

I want catch bulk insert errors in a file. I tried with adding ERRORFILE option in bulk insert but it doesn’t work.
Please, guide on this.

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on March 30, 2010 at 8:35 pm | Reply Madhivanan

What did you mean by “it doesn’t work?”

Note that the file will be located at Server’s directory by default

on January 29, 2011 at 3:49 am | Reply Shelley

Actually – I DO get an error file created when I use the ERRORFILE option with Bulk Insert. But my biggest complaint is that the .Error.Txt file that gets created
with it is useless. In the MESSAGE window of the console I get a nice descriptive error such as:
The bulk load failed. Unexpected NULL value in data file row 7263, column 6. The destination column (EffDate) is defined as NOT NULL.

But in the .Error.Txt file it just says:

Row 7263 File Offset 246943 ErrorFile Offset 26 – HRESULT 0×80004005

NOT very helpful.

309. on March 11, 2010 at 11:52 am | Reply Rajesh

insert INTO tbL_excel

SELECT *
FROM OPENROWSET(‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′,
‘Excel 8.0;Database=\\pc31\C\Testexcel.xls’,
‘SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]‘)

anybody help me solve this.

Local Excel sheet to SQL(Remote) Server

on March 15, 2010 at 3:50 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Did you get any error?

310. on March 15, 2010 at 5:59 am | Reply barry

Anyone help me do a bulk export ? Im trying to get sql tables from SQL Server 2005 into SQL Server Compact … thanks !

311. on March 16, 2010 at 3:13 am | Reply Sudipto Mitra

Hey ! Its really nice & simple !!

But when I’m doing it from an excel 2003 file, few of the columns in the table shows as “null” whereas its actually not (“Text” as for e.g).

and also plz help how to updat the SQL table automatically by manually updating the rows/columns of the source excel file ?

312. on March 17, 2010 at 2:33 am | Reply meghana

hi,

I have a similar question. How to read a file name(.tif) in SQL stored proc and split the file name and compare that with some already defined strings and if that is valid then i
need to insert that name as a column field in a .txt file and save. If that is not a valid keyword while comparing the already defined once, that file has been moved from the
current folder and moved to the Rejected folder.

Please advise.

Thanks
Meghana

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313. on March 17, 2010 at 2:41 am | Reply meghana

i for got mention an example

This is the path that i have read the files like :-

\\C:\Faxes\AI in this i have a file like this 8AIL998HOT.tif
now i have read the and compare the file name like 8 is company code and it was defined as ’008-lucky group LLC’,AIL was defined as “Airline Southwest” …and so on like
that
i need to read that file name and save those values in the .txt file.

the o/p txt.file looks like :-

’0008-lucky group LLC’,'Airline Southwest’,’0998′,’HOT’,'\\C:\Faxes\AI\8AIL998HOT.tif’

like this all the entried have to be saved in the .txt file.

I have to write a Stored Proc. Please share your thoughts.

thanks
Meghana

314. on March 30, 2010 at 3:39 pm | Reply Deepali

Hi Pinal,

I am using bulk insert to copy data from text file to SQL server table.

I want to know the number of rows affected by bulk insert, to know whether all rows in the file are copied or not.

Also I want to generate error file if any error occured while bulk inserting data file.

Please, guide

Thanks

315. on April 6, 2010 at 3:57 am | Reply Kevin

Thank you, Sir! :)

316. on April 13, 2010 at 5:48 am | Reply EDER

BUENA ,.PERO QUE BUEN EJEMPLO ME SRIVIO MUCHO GRACIAS

317. on April 16, 2010 at 12:01 pm | Reply sabarish

Nice description…

Really good

318. on April 17, 2010 at 3:30 am | Reply Daniel

Thanks very much… saved a huge amount of laborious manual entry… Awesome tip.

319. on April 22, 2010 at 3:29 am | Reply Samson Loo

Exactly what I was looking for… thanks again Pinal!

320. on April 26, 2010 at 10:08 am | Reply Ningappa

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Hi,

any one help me how to import data from exl sheet to the table in remote server

on April 26, 2010 at 12:59 pm | Reply Madhivanan

You can use OPENROWSET Function

Refer this post to know the example codes
http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=49926

321. on April 26, 2010 at 4:37 pm | Reply Tejas Shah

Hi Ningappa,

To import excel sheet to remote server, either you should able to access remote server on your local and process excel file OR you need to copy excel file on remote server
and access it using OPENRowSet as Madhivanan specified.

Thanks,

Tejas
SQLYoga.com

322. on April 29, 2010 at 1:49 pm | Reply praveen

Hii

i am new to SQl, i have given a task of importing excel files in a folder to 1 table in SQL2008 and it should not have any duplicate row.

All files are having same field.

How to do this? Please help.

on April 29, 2010 at 6:20 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Use staging table

Insert into staging_table(col)

select * from OPENROWSET(…)

.
.

After all inserts run

insert into main_table(col)

select distinct col from staging_table

For OPENROWSET function and code examples, refer

http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=49926

323. on May 2, 2010 at 12:52 am | Reply Gaurav

Hi,
First my java code downloads some file from a ftp location then execute a sql server procedure to bulk insert this file into a tbale but I am getting an error that this file cannot be
processed as it is currently used by some other process..

Can you please help me what can be done to fix this problem?

324. on May 8, 2010 at 1:02 am | Reply rehana

Hi Pinal

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I have a text file with fixed length data values in each row with no delimiters. As the number of data rows are huge, i cannot convert it to a CSV. How do I import the data from
the text file to the database table.

Table structure is
Number Char 16
Name Char 15
Amount Decimal 15,2
Ticker Char 3
date datetime 8

the txt file row is of the form

0001CAQMJ60010001-00265890-01Abraham Jones EC01-02-07 18449.09USD

desired result
Number = 0001-00265890-01
Name = Abraham Jones
Amount = 18449.09
Ticker = USD
date = 01-02-07

325. on May 8, 2010 at 11:35 pm | Reply shoukat

i want to use the following store procedure for bulk insert from csv to table , i have about 20 files and 20 tables

set ANSI_NULLS ON
–set QUOTED_IDENTIFIER OFF
GO

ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[ps_Bulk_Import]

@tableName varchar(10),
@PathFileName varchar(100)

AS

DECLARE @SQL varchar(2000)

BEGIN
SET @SQL = ‘BULK INSERT ‘”+@tableName+”‘ FROM ‘”+@PathFileName+”‘ WITH (FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’) ‘
END

EXEC (@SQL)

when i tried the above code it gives me error

Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 1

Incorrect syntax near ‘Testtable’.
Msg 319, Level 15, State 1, Line 1
Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘with’. If this statement is a common table expression or an xmlnamespaces clause, the previous statement must be terminated with a
semicolon.

Any body help to achive this task.thanks

Shoukat

on May 10, 2010 at 11:44 am | Reply Madhivanan

The part

SET @SQL = ‘BULK INSERT ‘”+@tableName+”‘ FROM ‘”+@PathFileName+”‘ WITH (FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’) ‘

should be

SET @SQL = ‘BULK INSERT ‘”+@tableName+”‘ FROM ‘”+@PathFileName+”‘ WITH (FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘’,'’,ROWTERMINATOR = ‘‘\n’’) ‘

326. on May 10, 2010 at 5:13 pm | Reply gokulan

Hi all

i want to export a CSV file in to a table excluding the file row . Could any one of you give me a saple query .

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Thanks in advance

on May 31, 2010 at 3:42 pm | Reply Najam Khan

WITH (FIRSTROW = 2, FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘’,’’,ROWTERMINATOR = ‘‘\n’’) ‘

327. on May 10, 2010 at 5:15 pm | Reply gokulan

Hi all

I want to import a csv file in to a table , and i want to exclude the first row of the CSV file while importing .

can any one of you help me witha sample query .

Thanks in Advance

on May 10, 2010 at 6:33 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Use the option firstrow=2

328. on May 10, 2010 at 9:19 pm | Reply shoukat

Hi Madhivanan,

when i tried this

SET @SQL = ‘BULK INSERT ‘+@tableName+’ FROM ‘+@PathFileName+’ WITH (FIELDTERMINATOR = ”,”, ROWTERMINATOR = ”\n”)’

it seems good. i mean when i tried @tablename is test(which exist in my database) and PathFileName is temp(a file that does not exist). it give me error file dose not exist. but
when i pass D:temp.csv then it give me error like

Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 1

Incorrect syntax near ‘D’.
Msg 319, Level 15, State 1, Line 1
Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘with’. If this statement is a common table expression or an xmlnamespaces clause, the previous statement must be terminated with a
semicolon.

(1 row(s) affected)

i will be gratefull for your help. thanks

Shoukat

on May 11, 2010 at 12:15 pm | Reply Madhivanan

D:temp.csv

should be

D:\temp.csv

Also the file should exist in the Server’s directory and not with the local system you are working with

329. on May 19, 2010 at 7:36 pm | Reply Warraich

Hi Pinalkumar,

Thanks for this awesome blog, great source of info.

I used your code to import data from a csv file which worked great, just need some help in automating this by using SQL Agent Job.

Code:
————————–

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USE CSVTestData
GO

BULK
INSERT CSVTest
FROM ‘c:\Test\csvtest.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO
—————————–

Questions:
- What the best way to automate the above code and how?
- How do I use SQL Job Agent to automate this, Can I create a stored procedure and put this code in there and then call (Schedule) it from SQL Job Agent?

Thanks much,
Warraich

on May 20, 2010 at 11:32 am | Reply Madhivanan

Yes. Put that code in procedure and schedule that procedure as a job to execute periodically

330. on May 24, 2010 at 5:33 pm | Reply kusum

Hi,

I’ve a 45 GB file and I am using bulk insert to import it. its working fine but taking alot of time(9-10 hours). Any ideas to improve its performance would be highly appreciated.

Thanks,
Kusum

on May 24, 2010 at 7:35 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Did the table have any indexes?

If so, try removing them and insert data. After that create indexes

331. on May 25, 2010 at 12:54 pm | Reply kusum

no, no indexes, no constraints, nothing, its a heap table we created specially to import all the data.

332. on May 26, 2010 at 11:08 am | Reply Sanjeev

–Drop the table to clean up database.

SELECT *
FROM CSVTest
GO

====================Q==================
Drop table syntax is not written in the given code…

333. on May 28, 2010 at 3:59 pm | Reply Muhammad Khalid

This helped but when I run i next time it repeats the records, what query do i need to remove existing records.

Regards,
Khalid

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on May 28, 2010 at 8:02 pm | Reply Madhivanan

You need to delete the existing data from the table before using bulk insert

334. on May 28, 2010 at 5:20 pm | Reply Muhammad Khalid

What should i do to move table1 in my database which is at last position, how can i move it upward or place it upward among tables. Secondaly it will be highly appreciated if
any one gives me a query, the scenerio is that when I create a table so it should get created even if it already exists, and drops the old table.

Regards.
Khalid

on May 28, 2010 at 7:39 pm | Reply Madhivanan

If exists(select * from information_schema.tables where table_name=’your_table’)

DROP table your_table

GO

CREATE Table your_table(

.
.
.
.

335. on May 28, 2010 at 10:25 pm | Reply Mubarak

thanks pinal, that was helpful to me.

336. on May 31, 2010 at 8:09 am | Reply Larry

Hi ,

the solution works great however any suggestions if the data has comma part of it? the data is between two double quotes “”

example:

1, “a,b”
2,a
3,b
4,c

the condition “FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,” causes the data “a,b” is being considered as having a third field

337. on June 3, 2010 at 5:28 pm | Reply sivanandan

Hi pinal ,

Is it possible to import the xls file using BulkInsert?

338. on June 4, 2010 at 6:14 pm | Reply Pooneh

Hi.
I have some txt large files that contains about 3milion records. I used Bulk and in about 2 minute one of them inserted into my table.
For that txt file format and my table format are difference, I create SP and in it,create a temp table(#t) and copied data by bulk into it, then inserted all in my table.
But from insert completed time to now(about 6hours), sqlserver process memory usage is very large(about 300MB) and also after restart get this amount of memory.Why?I
drop temp table in end of SP.Why sql server memory usage is so big?!?!?! What do I do?

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on June 5, 2010 at 10:10 am | Reply Imran Mohammed

@Pooneh

Just my guess, try doing this.

Method 1: Create a Clustered Index on Temp table in the stored procedure before loading data into temp table.

Method 2: Instead of Temp Table, use Permanent (Staging) table and create Clustered Index on the table and see the performance impact.

Check your join Conditions if you have used any, if you think you can make join conditions columns Integer by using Convert (int, Column_name) could improve
performance. If you are using any other table to join with temp table, check if indexes are created on other table.

Let us know if this was helpful. Or if you solved this issue with any other method, if so please share it here, so that we all can benefit with the information.

~ IM.

339. on June 16, 2010 at 1:09 am | Reply Mubarak

Hi

I have a .dat file with 700+ records; I am only getting 410 rows of data inserted. I have not noticed any difference in the format in the data files. What could be the problem?

Thanks,

on June 16, 2010 at 11:55 am | Reply Madhivanan

Can you check data of line 411 to see if there is any mismatch?

340. on June 28, 2010 at 7:27 pm | Reply Mogyi

Hi!

Excelent work, thnx! :)

But i have a problem.
I don’t append hungarian characters to the table.
:(

Anybody can help?

BR, M

341. on July 1, 2010 at 1:20 pm | Reply Venkata Polepalli

Hi,

Thanks for your article,

Its very useful

Regards,
Venkata

342. on July 1, 2010 at 6:11 pm | Reply Ivana

Thank you for the article. Unfortunately, as my app’s database resides on a server that is also used by other apps from other developers, i dont have the right permissions.

From the microsoft website:

“Only members of the sysadmin and bulkadmin fixed server roles can execute BULK INSERT.”
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa225968%28SQL.80%29.aspx

Apparently the the ‘bulk admin’ role is a server wide role, so bulk access means bulk access to *every database*.

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on July 8, 2010 at 3:35 pm | Reply Mani

Thanks for the query.

I have a table with 6 columns, but csv with 5 columns, i need to save one default value to that column, is it possible in this statement.

for example if the file contais 50,000 line then the first 10,000 records have the value 1 and next 10,000 records have the value 2 and so on….

Thanks in advance.

343. on July 8, 2010 at 3:43 pm | Reply mani

Hi,
Thanks for the query.

I have a table with 6 columns, but csv with 5 columns, i need to save one default value to that column, is it possible in this statement.

for example if the file contains 50,000 line then the first 10,000 records have the value 1 and next 10,000 records have the value 2 and so on….

Thanks in advance..

on July 8, 2010 at 7:19 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Refer this post. This exactly does what you want

http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan/archive/2010/03/17/bulk-insert-to-table-with-specific-columns.aspx

344. on July 8, 2010 at 6:21 pm | Reply Vijay Gonela

Hi Pinal,

Thank you for the excellent article here, I was very useful.
I have query regarding the same, I am importing the csv file data and it’s working fine, but need to format data while BULK Insert.
My Data format is

ID,Name,Age,Location
“1″,”James”,”25″,”London”
“2″,”Smith”,”30″,”New York”
“3″,”Tom”,”28″,”Munich”

While Bulk insert the data is inserted alogn with the quotes “” , becoz my filedSeperator = “,”.
Here I need to remove the quotes, is there any way we can do that.

Thanks
Vijay

on August 6, 2010 at 8:41 pm | Reply John

Vijay,

Did anyone respond or did you find a solution? I have the exact same scenario and have not been able to find a work around for the bulk load.

345. on July 8, 2010 at 7:31 pm | Reply firdaus

thanks for your knowledge sharing if i want ms certificate in asp.net what i do now

346. on July 13, 2010 at 10:48 am | Reply Ajay

Hi

Can anybody tell me how can i import data in excel file through bulk insert query

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bulk insert tbllaningpages
from ‘E:\landing-page.xls’
WITH (FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘ ‘,ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’)
GO

above is my query but its raise an error

table have eight column and 1 identity column

Ajay

on August 5, 2010 at 6:42 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Use Openrowset function. Refer this for more informations

http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan/archive/2007/08/27/import-export-to-excel.aspx

347. on August 3, 2010 at 12:32 pm | Reply vinoth

hi friend,
I need a urgent help,
i am installed ssis 2005 , now i want to integreate excel bulk data into my data base in ssis 2005.
i am new to this, pls explain with screen shots,

because in ssis 2008 they give a option for import

in 2005 how can i do

pls help me urgent help

348. on August 3, 2010 at 6:07 pm | Reply Ashish

use linked server to link the excel file and then insert those record into your table or temp table

349. on August 5, 2010 at 2:28 am | Reply shoeb

Hi,

I want to convert the date value in a CSV file which is in the format 20100513 into dd/mm/yyyy when importing into the table

on August 5, 2010 at 6:40 pm | Reply Madhivanan

First import data to staging table. From there format the date

350. on August 13, 2010 at 5:06 pm | Reply sowmiya

Hai

I need code for,

How can i import data from excel file to SQL server2000 in vb.net2005.

I need d code in clear manner with clear step.

Can anyone help me?

Regards

Sowmi.

on August 13, 2010 at 6:32 pm | Reply Madhivanan

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Refer this post

You need OPENROWSET function

http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=49926

351. on August 13, 2010 at 6:01 pm | Reply Dayanandhan

If is it possible to UPDATE the table by using Excel Sheet.

352. on August 13, 2010 at 7:48 pm | Reply Ashish

yes, use linked server with provider for excel 8.0

on August 19, 2010 at 9:47 am | Reply Dayanandhan

Thank You For your Reply, Please I need the Query.

353. on August 14, 2010 at 12:32 pm | Reply sowmiya

Hai Mr.Madhivanan,

Thanks for ur reply,

But am new to vb.net.

I don’t know where to write d code dat u have posted.

Can u give full code.

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Sowmi.

on August 16, 2010 at 2:07 pm | Reply Madhivanan

You need to execute that code in VB.net application just like you run a insert statement

354. on August 18, 2010 at 2:06 pm | Reply Ahmad Hussain

Just want to say you that you are Super star , thx lot you solved my big problem.
God blessed you
Rgds
AHmad

355. on August 29, 2010 at 11:06 pm | Reply anand

C# code for inserting values in SQl DB using ASP.Net

on August 31, 2010 at 1:15 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Refer this site http://www.asp.net

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356. on September 17, 2010 at 9:47 am | Reply Dayanandhan

Hi.. All,,

Select col1 from test

O/p

Col1
1
2
3

But I need to display the col1 like this

col1
1,2,3

It is Possible to display like this, i need the query, Please help me

on September 20, 2010 at 6:50 pm | Reply Madhivanan

declare @col varchar(8000)

select @col=coalesce(col+’,',”)+col1 from test
select @col

357. on September 23, 2010 at 2:53 pm | Reply Masih

Hi Pinal,

UNC path is not working to bulk insert in sql server 2000

plz give me solution.

Regards,
Masih

on September 23, 2010 at 6:29 pm | Reply Madhivanan

Make sure the Server has proper access to the UNC path

358. on September 23, 2010 at 4:11 pm | Reply Masih

Hello Pinal,

UNC path is not working to bulk insert in sql server 2000

plz give me solution.

Thanks,
Masih

359. on September 27, 2010 at 10:28 pm | Reply kalyan

hello pinal,

i have to import the data from notepad to sql server 2005.

notepad contains the data:-

BILLING_ENGINE_ID=41|SCP_ID=54342002|SEQUENCE_NUMBER=70196863|CDR_TYPE=1|RECORD_DATE=20100428102018

Billing_engine,scp_id,sequence_number,cdr_type,record_date are the column names.

Import the data from column fields to 41,54342002,70196863

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like that

can u help me regarding this issue

Thanks & regards

kalyan

360. on September 30, 2010 at 3:03 am | Reply Courtney

Thanks, worked for my needs.

361. on October 12, 2010 at 12:17 pm | Reply happychhabra

its nice query

its ture that you are god of sql server

thankyou sir

keep it sir

362. on October 25, 2010 at 11:45 am | Reply Poongodi

I used the above coding in sql server 2005 but i am getting below errow. Pls can you help me?

Msg 4860, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Cannot bulk load. The file “c:\csvtest.txt” does not exist.

on October 26, 2010 at 1:13 pm | Reply madhivanan

Note that the file should be in server’s directory and not in your local system

363. on October 25, 2010 at 11:47 am | Reply Poongodi

Hi sir,

I tried out the above coding in sql server 2005 but I am getting below error: can you help me why i am getting this error

Msg 4860, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Cannot bulk load. The file “c:\csvtest.txt” does not exist.

Regards,
Poongodi

on November 15, 2010 at 1:54 pm | Reply madhivanan

Note that the file location is Server’s location

364. on October 27, 2010 at 7:53 am | Reply marvin

good day sir,

tried the above script and it worked..thanks..

i have one issue though..is there any way i can verify if the source file is in the correct format or if the file is really a csv file before running the script..

thank you sir..

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365. on October 27, 2010 at 4:37 pm | Reply Rico

i would like to ask how can i insert the csv file created in linux..?

this had some issue in row terminator…

tnx in advance…

on October 28, 2010 at 1:38 pm | Reply madhivanan

What is the row terminator? Specify it when you use bulk insert statement

366. on November 14, 2010 at 11:35 pm | Reply Dirk Loosen

Hi
Bulk insert by itself seems to work fine, but combined with IDENTITY option set, its not working for me as expected…

I have a CSV file with a few columns, lets keep the example simple:
Row 1: x,a
Row2: y,b
Row3 z,c

I use the following to create a table:

CREATE TABLE testTable
(testTableID int PRIMARY KEY IDENTITY(1,1),
frameNo VARCHAR(40),
relTime VARCHAR(40),)

I then try and populate the table with the

BULK
INSERT testTable
FROM ‘C:\data\tshark_csv\test.csv’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)

It doesn’t work. I want it to generate the first column with unique numbers per row with increment 1. The first column (x for the first row) should be placed in the second
column of the table (as it should do because of the IDENTITY feature… instead it fails. If however I put a comma in front of every row so the row one for example looks like
,x,a then it works.
Any ideas how I can fix this. I don’t want to first have to manipulate the CSV file…lets face it – CSV files don’t start with commas….they only use them to separate columns…

Any ideas?

on November 15, 2010 at 1:49 pm | Reply madhivanan

You need to specify to the columns. Make sure to read this which exactly does what you need

http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan/archive/2010/03/17/bulk-insert-to-table-with-specific-columns.aspx

367. on November 26, 2010 at 8:34 pm | Reply dater

Many thanks Dave !

368. on December 15, 2010 at 10:24 pm | Reply Ricotoy

hi sir.., hope you can help me on this…

if found out that the address is a unicode “unicode string”
it has an error executing the below code how to declare data types unicode specially “Address VARCHAR(MAX)”

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CREATE TABLE CSVTest
(ID INT,
FirstName VARCHAR(40),
LastName VARCHAR(40),
Address VARCHAR(MAX),
BirthDate SMALLDATETIME)
GO

BULK
INSERT CSVTest
FROM ‘c:\csvtest.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘|’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)
GO

thank you and more power…

369. on December 23, 2010 at 3:54 am | Reply Miguel Soto

How can I import a .csv file from a local PC where run vb.Net aplication to a remote SQL Server where I need to up the .csv data on a SQL Server Table.

on December 27, 2010 at 3:50 pm | Reply madhivanan

Use BULK INSERT with unc path

370. on January 11, 2011 at 9:06 am | Reply katrina sicat

hi i’m getting the error message “The Bulk Insert construct or statement is not supported.” I’m using SQL Server 2005.

on January 11, 2011 at 4:42 pm | Reply madhivanan

Can you post the exact code you used?

371. on January 14, 2011 at 2:52 pm | Reply yudhi bhole

How to export #table data to comma seperated csv?

Please help me,

Thanks

on January 14, 2011 at 4:48 pm | Reply madhivanan

Use Import/export wizard and choose destination as flat file

372. on January 15, 2011 at 6:08 am | Reply alejandro

Buenas tardes tengo casi el mismo problema que todos comence una plicacion en visual net 2008 en donde pretendo importar archivos txt a una base de datos en sql server.
son 90 archvios de 45 tiendas es decir tienda1entrada
tienda1salida
tienda2entradas
tienda2salidas
y asi hasta llegar a la
tienda45 con sus entradas y salidas.
las 45 tiendas mandan 2 archvios de txt cada una

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haciendo un total de 90 txt que se guardan en c:\Impotacion
de alli tengo que tomar los 90 archvios y por medio de mi aplicacion cargarlos en un base de datos de sql que tiene las tablas de entradas y salidas de cada una de las tiendas
es decir serian 90 tablas ya echas y con una estructura que debo respetar el ejemplo de los txt es
08;1743;27;03;9311;00005;13012011;0;70;10 tengo que ver la manera de mandar esos 90 txt a cada una de sustablas en la base de datos algun codigo para mandar todo
de la carpeta a cada uno de sus tablas.

373. on January 21, 2011 at 7:04 pm | Reply sujin

Thanks!

374. on January 22, 2011 at 3:10 am | Reply KG

Is there a way to set it to do this automatically 2-3 times a day? I’m trying to to figure out how to import a set of data into my database 2-3 times a day.

375. on January 27, 2011 at 3:21 am | Reply Imran Bashir

Nice article.

376. on January 31, 2011 at 9:43 pm | Reply dwhitaker

Worked perfect, thanks. How about if you need to import multiple files with different names. Can you use some kind of wildcard? For example if I have textfile.01,
textfile.02..etc, is there a way to import all files in the folder who’s name starts with textfile?

Thanks!

377. on February 1, 2011 at 9:19 am | Reply Harish

Hi i want to know that how can i assign a value dynamically to the bulk copy method, following is the code
using (CsvDataReader csvData = new CsvDataReader(FileUpload_participant.PostedFile.InputStream, Encoding.Default))
{

value = Convert.ToInt32(ddl_select_Participant.SelectedValue);
csvData.Settings.HasHeaders = true;
csvData.Columns.Add(“nvarchar”); // Rater Name
csvData.Columns.Add(“nvarchar”); // Rater EmailID
csvData.Columns.Add(“varchar”); //Participant ID
using (SqlBulkCopy bulkCopy = new SqlBulkCopy(“Data Source=development;Initial Catalog= Program;User ID=sa;Password=test456″))
{
bulkCopy.DestinationTableName = “CEE_form_Table_Rater”;
bulkCopy.ColumnMappings.Add(“Rater Name”, “Rater_Name”); // map Rater Name to Rater_Name
bulkCopy.ColumnMappings.Add(“Rater EmailID”, “Rater_Email”); // map Rater EmailID to Rater_Email
bulkCopy.ColumnMappings.GetType(“value”);//, “Participant_id”);
bulkCopy.WriteToServer(csvData);

bulkCopy.ColumnMappings.GetType(“value”);//, — for this thing i want to pass a paramater…. to obtain the participant ID.

378. on February 8, 2011 at 2:50 pm | Reply Dony

Please assist me am trying to import data from an excell file with the name template.csv to a sql server 2008 database but am having problems that is “There was an error
parsing the query. [ Token line number = 1,Token line offset = 10,Token in error = INTO ]” i have also tried using BULK but still the same error that is “There was an error
parsing the query. [ Token line number = 1,Token line offset = 10,Token in error = BULK ]” My code is as follows

SELECT * INTO template

OPENROWSET
(
MSDASQL,DRIVER={Microsoft Excel Driver(AccountType.csv)},
DBQ=D:\CSV\AccountType.csv,

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SELECT * FROM AccountType
)

Also the second code i have used is…

BULK INSERT
INTO AccountType
FROM D:\CSV\AccountType.csv
WITH
(
BATCHSIZE=7
ROWS_PER_BATCH=7
CHECK_CONSTRAINTS
CODEPAGE=RAW

FIELDTERMINATOR=’,',
ROWTERMINATOR=’\n’
)
Please Assist

on February 9, 2011 at 3:16 pm | Reply madhivanan

Are you using Mysql or SQL Server?

379. on February 12, 2011 at 11:12 pm | Reply laailalalaa

what if my db table has an identity column (not present in the .csv file) ?

thanks

on February 15, 2011 at 8:39 pm | Reply madhivanan

You need to specify the columns and omit the identity column.
Refer this to know how to do it
http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan/archive/2010/03/17/bulk-insert-to-table-with-specific-columns.aspx

380. on February 13, 2011 at 4:05 pm | Reply Tejas

Hi… Nice solution Pinal.

Thanks a lot…
it really slove my probelm.

381. on February 16, 2011 at 3:34 pm | Reply GD Saravanan

Hi.
When i am using given bulk import command in SQL 2005 srever. I got the error msg.

BULK INSERT test FROM ‘d:\db\AreaCode.txt’

WITH
(
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)

GO

Error Shows:

Msg 4861, Level 16, State 1, Line 5

Cannot bulk load because the file “d:\db\AreaCode.txt” could not be opened. Operating system error code 21(The device is not ready.).

Kindly provide the solution what’s the issue and how to fix this.

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382. on February 16, 2011 at 4:05 pm | Reply JK

Hi, do you mind to help me on this?

I was wondering how am I going to get some values from a text file. Here is an example from a TEXT file.

666,666,666.00 555,555,555.00 444,444,444.00

999,999,999.00 888,888,888.00 777,777.00

I am using “BULK INSERT TBTest2 FROM ‘c:\testfile.txt’ WITH (FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘ ‘, ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’)” to get value from this text file.
It is successful when it read and insert into database for first row because every value has a gap with a “space”.
But when it read to second row, it wont work for value 777,777.00 because it detected more than one “space” between 888,888,888.00 and 777,777.00.

383. on February 21, 2011 at 11:39 pm | Reply Mohsin

I have a requirement to export from SQL Server Table to .CSV file can any body help me in this regard.

on February 22, 2011 at 5:12 pm | Reply madhivanan

Refer thi post

http://www.sqlservercurry.com/2011/01/sql-server-export-table-to-csv.html

384. on February 25, 2011 at 9:50 pm | Reply AndyF

This whole concept goes to crud if you have identity fields. About as useful as a yacht in the Sahara Desert…

385. on February 26, 2011 at 2:23 am | Reply XV

Thanx.

386. on February 28, 2011 at 12:13 am | Reply dipu

Hi

Can anybody help me how to import data(email addresses) from sql server2000 in to Microsoft outlook express 6.

My main aim is to send company newsletter to all account holder.Most of them have email address.

Do i need to run a query in server to find out all email address and then export these to a csv file.Or you have a better solution for that.

Can I send it from Mozilla thunder bird.

Please please please give the answer ASAP.

Thanks
Dipu

387. on March 2, 2011 at 10:20 pm | Reply SN42647

Hi All,
i am new to DB.I have a question , i want to compare SQL server table values to CSV values. how can i do that?
Thanks,
SN42647

on March 3, 2011 at 1:44 pm | Reply madhivanan

You need to first import csv data to a staging table and then compare. Refer this to know how to import csv to a table
http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan/archive/2010/03/17/bulk-insert-to-table-with-specific-columns.aspx

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388. on March 10, 2011 at 2:54 pm | Reply Akshay

I have an Excel spreadsheet. How can I, using openrowset, or using bulk insert (for CSV), insert only specific columns from that spreadsheet into a table? Like, if I have 10
columns in the XLS/CSV, how can I import only the 5th, 6th and 7th columns? Additionally, how do I import all rows from the 5th one to the last but 4th or 5th one? Please
post a reply soon. Thanks in advance!

on March 15, 2011 at 2:14 pm | Reply madhivanan

You need to specify those columns in the SELECT Statement

http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan/archive/2007/08/27/import-export-to-excel.aspx

389. on March 15, 2011 at 3:00 pm | Reply mkateko

Hi,

Im trying to execute this sql statement and it gives me an error:

BULK
insert table_name
FROM ‘C:\Documents and Settings\shibammk\My Documents\BrandRefresh\filename.txt’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘,’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)

All I want to do is load a csv file to update my details using sql.

on March 15, 2011 at 8:32 pm | Reply madhivanan

What is the error you are getting?

390. on March 21, 2011 at 6:25 pm | Reply Brijesh Bellur

hi Dave,
today i m stuck with a problem,
i have 1crore data in csv format,
when i use bulk insert statment it gives following error:

Msg 4866, Level 16, State 1, Line 2

The bulk load failed. The column is too long in the data file for row 1, column 5. Verify that the field terminator and row terminator are specified correctly.
Msg 7399, Level 16, State 1, Line 2
The OLE DB provider “BULK” for linked server “(null)” reported an error. The provider did not give any information about the error.
Msg 7330, Level 16, State 2, Line 2
Cannot fetch a row from OLE DB provider “BULK” for linked server “(null)”.

i checked all fieldelminator, roweliminator,column name every thing is fine.

thanks in advance,

391. on March 21, 2011 at 6:37 pm | Reply Brijesh Bellur

format example of csv:

“123″,”amit”,”mumbai”

bulk insert table1

from ‘d:\test.csv’
with(fieldeliminator=’,',
roweliminator=’\n’)

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on March 21, 2011 at 6:48 pm | Reply Brijesh Bellur

sory,

i have spled wrong

revised:

format example of csv:

“123″,”amit”,”mumbai”

bulk insert table1

from ‘d:\test.csv’
with(fieldterminator=’,’,
rowterminator=’\n’)

on March 22, 2011 at 12:36 pm | Reply madhivanan

Can you post the structure of the table table1?

392. on April 1, 2011 at 12:43 pm | Reply Manish

Sorry sir but this code doesnot work it give the error like

Cannot bulk load. The file “C:\csvtest.csv” does not exist.

on April 1, 2011 at 12:50 pm | Reply madhivanan

The file should be in server’s directory

393. on April 6, 2011 at 7:59 pm | Reply Dharmesh Chauhan

Hi I am a bit rusty with SQL, please can you help with Bulk insert on SQL 2005, getting error .
Thank you very much

Msg 2714, Level 16, State 6, Line 1

There is already an object named ‘Data5′ in the database.
Msg 4861, Level 16, State 1, Line 5
Cannot bulk load because the file “c:\Agent\Agent.txt” could not be opened. Operating system error code 3(The system cannot find the path specified.).

Coding is:

USE [Agentdata]
GO
/****** Object: Table [dbo].[Data] Script Date: 04/06/2011 15:08:06 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
SET ANSI_PADDING ON
GO
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Data5](
[Machine] [nvarchar](50) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NOT NULL,
[DateTime] [datetime] NOT NULL,
[I/i] [char](1) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NOT NULL,
[number] [nchar](6) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NOT NULL,
[process] [nchar](10) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NOT NULL,
[action] [nvarchar](150) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]

GO
SET ANSI_PADDING OFF
GO
USE [Agentdata]

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GO
ALTER TABLE [dbo].[Data] WITH CHECK ADD CONSTRAINT [FK_Data_Machine] FOREIGN KEY([Machine])
REFERENCES [dbo].[Machine] ([Machine name])

BULK INSERT Data4

FROM ‘c:\Agent\Agent.log’
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ‘\t’,
ROWTERMINATOR = ‘\n’
)

394. on April 7, 2011 at 9:18 pm | Reply anup

my file is 20 MB
contain different records in rows

01^035^0801^11^02^02^C^00001^2010^0021^300^^AAZPY7835N^ VENUGOPALKRISHNA YIDAGUR VENKATARAMAIAH^NO.63/3,BEHIND

UNANI^MEDICAL
INSTITUTE,^SUNKADAKATTE,^BANGALORE^^15^560091^^000000009664^000000000000^000000000290^INTE^000000000396^^000000000000^^000000000000^00
08^035^0205^10^03^15^R^00008^^0021^^MD^^000000000000^000000000000^000000000000^^000000000000^^000000000000^^000000000000^000000000000^00000
000000010000^I0244^020211^722005^I0309^040211
02^035^0181^035^0061^0020^00002^00000^0000000003105^^C0240^020211^722005^C0309^040211

how i can do this

395. on April 9, 2011 at 11:00 pm | Reply Amit Singh

Hii,
I am importing data from excel file in Sql server 2005
and I tried following query but It returns an error messege

insert INTO aba

SELECT *
FROM OPENROWSET(‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′,
‘Excel 8.0;Database=d:\book1.xls’,
‘SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]‘)

error message is:

OLE DB provider “Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0″ for linked server “(null)” returned message “Unspecified error”.
Msg 7303, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Cannot initialize the data source object of OLE DB provider “Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0″ for linked server “(null)”.

How to fix it

on April 12, 2011 at 3:49 pm | Reply madhivanan

Make sure the server has EXCEL installed with it

396. on April 20, 2011 at 11:13 am | Reply Mmumz

Hey there,
this is a very helpful article
however i wouldlike to ask what is the datatype for ticks?

397. on April 24, 2011 at 11:01 am | Reply Nanda Kishore

Hi,
I have 21 million rows and 7 columns of data. Total size of CSV file is 2.3 gigs. Can I use export import wizard for nulk insert?
Nanda Kishore

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on April 26, 2011 at 7:42 pm | Reply madhivanan

Use bulk insert or bcp

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