FIX: BCP Import with Extended Character as a Column Delimiter Fails

Importing data into SQL Server using the bulk copy program (BCP) may fail if the field terminator is an extended character (that is, ASCII values 128-255). The problem only happens with import files that are over 32 MB in size.

To work around this following, do any one of the following:

• Do not use extended characters as field terminators in the import file.
• Keep the import file size below 32 MB in size.
• Split the import file into several files, each of these being less than 32 MB in size.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in SQL Server 7.0. This problem has been corrected in U.S. Service Pack 2 for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:For more information, contact your primary support provider.

This problem has been observed with command line BCP and SQL-DMO BulkCopy.

For example, suppose you have a file called Myfile.txt that is over 32 MB in size. You will encounter this problem if you use the following command-line BCP operation:

bcp pubs.dbo.mytable in myfile.txt -c -t -Usa -P

No data will be imported to pubs.dbo.mytable and results similar to the following will be displayed after a short pause: Furthermore, specifying a value for the FirstRow and LastRow properties (-F and -L with command-line BCP) will not avoid this problem.