Import Excel into MS SQL 2000

known problem or issues?

[fashezee]

When importing an excel spreadsheet into a MS SQL 2000 db,
is there any issues I should be aware of?

Also, is there any documention available that will show me how modify the excel
spreadsheet so that it gets imported into the DB problem free?

[Dreamquick]

My pet hate about XL > SQL is that the import process sometimes mis-classifies fields based on the initial values.

For example if I have a field which initially contains only numbers but further down the file it contains numbers (for example building name/number) SQL Server import guesses incorrectly this is a numeric field and then loses all my non-numeric data.

To be honest the best XL extract method is to export to a text format first and then import from that (preferably tab delimited as its harder for bad data to break), alternately export it to a more structured format ie DBF.

- Tony