SqlBulkCopy cannot access table

Question

After reading in an excel-sheet (to transferTable), I want to add that data to a new table (destinationTable) using SqlBulkCopy, but I'm getting the error:

Cannot access destination table 'test'

I've tried using the default tablename and using square brackets, but that didn't work.

Any suggestions?

private void writeToDBButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {
    MakeTable();
    destinationTable.TableName = "test";
    testDBDataSet.Tables.Add("test");

    // Connects to the sql-server using Connection.cs
    SqlConnection connection = Connection.GetConnection();

    using (connection) {
        connection.Open();

        // Uses SqlBulkCopy to copy the data from our transferTable to the destinationTable
        using (SqlBulkCopy bulkCopy = new SqlBulkCopy(connection)) {
            bulkCopy.DestinationTableName = destinationTable.TableName;

            try {
                // Write from the source to the destination.
                bulkCopy.WriteToServer(transferTable);
                this.dataGridView2.DataSource = destinationTable;
            }
            catch (Exception ex) {
                MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
            }

            connection.Close();
        }
    }
}

private void saveDBButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {
    this.Validate();
    this.usersBindingSource.EndEdit();
    this.tableAdapterManager.UpdateAll(this.testDBDataSet);
}


private void MakeTable() {
    for (int counter = 0; counter < columns; counter++) {
        DataColumn dummy = new DataColumn();
        dummy.DataType = System.Type.GetType("System.Double");
        destinationTable.Columns.Add(dummy);
    }
}

Answer 1

My issue was a bit different, turns out my table name was a reserved keyword in SQL so I had to do the following:

bulkCopy.DestinationTableName = $"{schema}.[{tableName}]";

Where schema is the target schema and tableName the target table name

From the documentation

DestinationTableName is a three-part name [database].[owningschema].[name]. You can qualify the table name with its database and owning schema if you choose. However, if the table name uses an underscore ("_") or any other special characters, you must escape the name using surrounding brackets as in ([database].[owningschema].[name_01])

Answer 2

Check that user that connects to db has

GRANT ALTER ON [dbo].[TABLE_XXX] TO [appuser] 

as suggested in answer by Jhilden on MSDN forum.

Answer 3

It seems that the user who executes this code don't have proper access to the database. * Check so that the user got access. * Check the connectionstring your using to connect to the database.

Answer 4

I recently ran into this same error and came across this post while googling for an answer. I was able to solve the problem by giving the user that is executing the bulk copy command insert and select permissions on the destination table. Originally I had only granted insert permission to the user and got the 'Cannot access destination table' error.

Answer 5

Interestingly, this also happens if you have a table name which is purely numeric. Start the table name with one or more alpha characters and it works just fine.

Answer 6

In my case, it's not a permission problem, but a special char in the table name problem ( parenthesis and & ).

Hope this helps

Answer 7

Bulkcopy expects the table to exists in the database. Also you should have access to this database or table.

Answer 8

Andrij Ferents answer is valid.

The destination table must exist before calling SQLBulkCopy. It is a common newbie mistake.

Answer 9

In my case, the problem was because of an existing Identity column