Article ID: 292588 - Last Review: October 31, 2003 - Revision: 3.2

PRB: Data Transformation Services May Fail to Import DBCS File Using Fixed Field

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This article was previously published under Q292588
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SYMPTOMS

If you use Data Transformation Services (DTS) and you try to import a text file that contains double byte characters (DBCS) using a Fixed field, the import may either fail or may not import correctly. When the import fails, you may receive the following error message:
General error: -2147209197 (80043013). Too many columns found in the current row; non-whitespace characters were found after the last defined column's data.
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CAUSE

If you use a Fixed field to separate a row in a text file, the row is separated into columns with the number of characters, not the number of bytes.

If the text file contains both DBCS and single byte characters (SBCS) and every row in the text file has the same number of bytes, the import may not work correctly because the number of characters in the rows and the columns may be different.
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WORKAROUND

Here are three ways to work around this behavior:
  • Use the Specify Column Delimiter instead of the Fixed field to separate the columns.

    -or-

  • Add the proper number of spaces to shorter columns to make the number of characters in every column the same.

    -or-

  • Use the BCP command utility to import fixed-length text data.
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APPLIES TO
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition
  • Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Standard Edition
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Keywords: 
kbbug kbprb KB292588
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