SQL Server: The bulk load failed. The column is too long in the data file for row 1, column 1

Question

Someone please help me here. Been looking at this for a couple of hours now but leading to nowhere.

I created a table in SQL Express 2008 R2 using the following script:

CREATE TABLE Features
(
ID int not null identity(1,1 ),
StopID varchar(10), 
Code int,
Name varchar(100),
Summary varchar(200),
Lat real,
Lon real,
street varchar(100),
city varchar(50),
region varchar(50),
postcode varchar(10),
country varchar(20),
zone_id varchar(20),
the_geom geography


 CONSTRAINT [PK_Features] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED 
(
    [ID] ASC
)WITH (PAD_INDEX  = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE  = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS  = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS  = ON) ON [PRIMARY]
) ON [PRIMARY]

Then I created the following format file created against my database table using the bcp tool:

10.0
12
1       SQLCHAR             2       100     ","    2     StopID               Latin1_General_CI_AS
2       SQLINT              1       4       ","    3     Code                 ""
3       SQLCHAR             2       100     ","    4     Name                 Latin1_General_CI_AS
4       SQLCHAR             2       200     ","    5     Summary              Latin1_General_CI_AS
5       SQLFLT4             1       4       ","    6     Lat                  ""
6       SQLFLT4             1       4       ","    7     Lon                  ""
7       SQLCHAR             2       100     ","    8     street               Latin1_General_CI_AS
8       SQLCHAR             2       50      ","    9     city                 Latin1_General_CI_AS
9       SQLCHAR             2       50      ","    10    region               Latin1_General_CI_AS
10      SQLCHAR             2       10      ","    11    postcode             Latin1_General_CI_AS
11      SQLCHAR             2       20      ","    12    country              Latin1_General_CI_AS
12      SQLCHAR             2       20      "\r\n"    13    zone_id              Latin1_General_CI_AS

This file has been modified to remove the ID and the_geom fields as these are not in my data file.

Then I tried to bulk insert a 1 line csv with the following content:

a,8,S,,45.439869,-75.695839,,,,,,

and all I get:

Msg 4866, Level 16, State 7, Line 35
The bulk load failed. The column is too long in the data file for row 1, column 1. Verify that the field terminator and row terminator are specified correctly.
Msg 7399, Level 16, State 1, Line 35
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 35
Cannot fetch a row from OLE DB provider "BULK" for linked server "(null)".

Any pointers will help here as I cannot figure this one out.

Answer 1

Problem was caused by the default prefix length settings in my format file. The data file I am importing from was not created using bcp so I had to set the prefix length of all the fields to 0 as follows:

0.0
12
1       SQLCHAR             0       100     ","    2     StopID               Latin1_General_CI_AS
2       SQLINT              0       4       ","    3     Code                 ""
3       SQLCHAR             0       100     ","    4     Name                 Latin1_General_CI_AS
4       SQLCHAR             0       200     ","    5     Summary              Latin1_General_CI_AS
5       SQLFLT4             0       4       ","    6     Lat                  ""
6       SQLFLT4             0       4       ","    7     Lon                  ""
7       SQLCHAR             0       100     ","    8     street               Latin1_General_CI_AS
8       SQLCHAR             0       50      ","    9     city                 Latin1_General_CI_AS
9       SQLCHAR             0       50      ","    10    region               Latin1_General_CI_AS
10      SQLCHAR             0       10      ","    11    postcode             Latin1_General_CI_AS
11      SQLCHAR             0       20      ","    12    country              Latin1_General_CI_AS
12      SQLCHAR             0       20      "\r\n"    13    zone_id              Latin1_General_CI_AS

With this change, the import was succesful.

Answer 2

Try this,

ROWTERMINATOR = '0x0a'

Answer 3

For what it's worth, I had the same problem because a conflict between the expected format and actual format of the date field in my CSV. I changed the date format in my CSV, and the it worked.