Exporting data from SQL Server Express to CSV (need quoting and escaping)

Question

I\'ve spent 2 days trying to export a 75,000 row table containing a large text field of user input data from a SQL server installation. This data contains every plain ascii

Answer 1

It can be done! However you have to specifically configure SSMS to use quoted output, because for some daft reason it is not the default.

In the query window you want to save go to Query -> Query Options...

Check the box "quote strings containing list separators when saving .csv results".

then

select 'apple,banana,cookie' as col1,1324 as col2,'one two three' as col3,'a,b,"c",d' as col4

will output

col1,col2,col3,col4
"apple,banana,cookie",1324,one two three,"a,b,""c"",d"

which is what we all want.