BULK INSERT with identity (auto-increment) column

Question

I am trying to add bulk data in database from CSV file.

Employee table has a column ID (PK) auto-incremented.

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Employ         


        

Answer 1

This is a very old post to answer, but none of the answers given solves the problem without changing the posed conditions, which I can't do.

I solved it by using the OPENROWSET variant of BULK INSERT. This uses the same format file and works in the same way, but it allows the data file be read with a SELECT statement.

Create your table:

CREATE TABLE target_table(
id bigint IDENTITY(1,1),
col1 varchar(256) NULL,
col2 varchar(256) NULL,
col3 varchar(256) NULL)

Open a command window an run:

bcp dbname.dbo.target_table format nul -c -x -f C:\format_file.xml -t; -T

This creates the format file based on how the table looks.

Now edit the format file and remove the entire rows where FIELD ID="1" and COLUMN SOURCE="1", since this does not exist in our data file.
Also adjust terminators as may be needed for your data file:

Now we can bulk load the data file into our table with a select, thus having full controll over the columns, in this case by not inserting data into the identity column:

INSERT INTO target_table (col1,col2, col3)
SELECT * FROM  openrowset(
bulk 'C:\data_file.txt',
formatfile='C:\format_file.xml') as t;