Bulk Insert (type mismatch) on datetime field containing NULL

Can anyone help please, I am using bulk insert for the first time.
The statement I am running is:
BULK INSERT Titles
FROM 'c:\Titles.txt'
WITH (FIRSTROW = 3,
FIELDTERMINATOR = '\t',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n',
KEEPNULLS,
FORMATFILE = 'c:\Titles.fmt')
Titles.txt contains tab delimited data like:
ID Description StartDate ExpiryDate ParentItemID
-- --
-- -- --
440 Doctor 1 Jan 1997 0:00 NULL NULL
441 Mr 1 Jan 1990 0:00 NULL 1
If I run the bulk insert statement I get the message:
Server: Msg 4864, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Bulk insert data conversion error (type mismatch) for row 3, column 4
(ExpiryDate)
In the file Titles.txt, if I find and replace NULL with nothing and
then execute the statement the data inserts into the Titles table.
I need to be able to insert without having to do find and replace as I
have hundreds of files to bulk insert.
The format file Titles.fmt looks like this:
8.0
5
1 SQLCHAR 0 12 "\t" 1
ID ""
2 SQLCHAR 0 100 "\t" 2
Description Latin1_General_CI_AS
3 SQLCHAR 0 24 "\t" 3
StartDate ""
4 SQLCHAR 0 24 "\t" 4
ExpiryDate ""
5 SQLCHAR 0 12 "\t" 5
ParentItemID ""If this is not a one time deal, you'd be better off making sure that when
these files are generated, the value for column ExpireDate that is null does
not contain a string NULL.
With the existing data files, personally, I'd write a little utility to
find/replace all the 'NULL' string in the ExpireDate column with an empty
string. This can be esily done with any tool that supports regular
expressions.
Linchi
"rai_sk@.hotmail.com" wrote:
> Can anyone help please, I am using bulk insert for the first time.
> The statement I am running is:
> BULK INSERT Titles
> FROM 'c:\Titles.txt'
> WITH (FIRSTROW = 3,
> FIELDTERMINATOR = '\t',
> ROWTERMINATOR = '\n',
> KEEPNULLS,
> FORMATFILE = 'c:\Titles.fmt')
> Titles.txt contains tab delimited data like:
> ID Description StartDate ExpiryDate ParentItemID
> -- --
> -- -- --
> 440 Doctor 1 Jan 1997 0:00 NULL NULL
> 441 Mr 1 Jan 1990 0:00 NULL 1
> If I run the bulk insert statement I get the message:
> Server: Msg 4864, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
> Bulk insert data conversion error (type mismatch) for row 3, column 4
> (ExpiryDate)
> In the file Titles.txt, if I find and replace NULL with nothing and
> then execute the statement the data inserts into the Titles table.
> I need to be able to insert without having to do find and replace as I
> have hundreds of files to bulk insert.
> The format file Titles.fmt looks like this:
> 8.0
> 5
> 1 SQLCHAR 0 12 "\t" 1
> ID ""
> 2 SQLCHAR 0 100 "\t" 2
> Description Latin1_General_CI_AS
> 3 SQLCHAR 0 24 "\t" 3
> StartDate ""
> 4 SQLCHAR 0 24 "\t" 4
> ExpiryDate ""
> 5 SQLCHAR 0 12 "\t" 5
> ParentItemID ""
>