Copy paste from Excel - should this work?

Hi,
Now I'm worried as I showed this bodge to a colleague and he is using
it a lot! I found that you can copy paste directly from Excel into the
Enterprise Manager GUI (we're on v8.0, sql server 2000).
The way I do it is say you had some Excel data in cols B-D, highlight A
as well (leaving this column blank), click the arrow on the new row at
the bottom of your table (a table with 3 columns matching B-D) in
Enterprise Manager and voila a paste option appears in the right hand
mouse button menu.
Why? What is this blank column doing? Is it causing any harm
internally to the db to insert nulls (or empty excel strings more
correctly?) in this column?
Any help / warnings much appreciated!
CTHi
I don't seem to be able to get this to happen, maybe I am missing something!
What version of SQL Server are you using and are your client tools at the
same version?
If you need to regularly import files into SQL Server you may want to look
at using DTS to do this, you can have jobs that regularly check any files
dropped into a directory and upload them check out
http://www.sqldts.com/default.aspx for lots of information on how to do this
.
John
"cheesey_toastie" wrote:

> Hi,
> Now I'm worried as I showed this bodge to a colleague and he is using
> it a lot! I found that you can copy paste directly from Excel into the
> Enterprise Manager GUI (we're on v8.0, sql server 2000).
> The way I do it is say you had some Excel data in cols B-D, highlight A
> as well (leaving this column blank), click the arrow on the new row at
> the bottom of your table (a table with 3 columns matching B-D) in
> Enterprise Manager and voila a paste option appears in the right hand
> mouse button menu.
> Why? What is this blank column doing? Is it causing any harm
> internally to the db to insert nulls (or empty excel strings more
> correctly?) in this column?
> Any help / warnings much appreciated!
> CT
>|||Hi John,
Its SQL Server 2000 (sp4), the client tools are Enterprise Manager V8.0
I do use the DTS for files but sometimes this is quicker!! As I said
my main concern was accidently showing a user how to do this and now I
wonder what it is doing internally (if anything). I'm confused you cant
replicate this behaviour. We do have a later version of SQL server on
a test environment - I'll try it there and see if it still works.
CT
John Bell wrote:[vbcol=seagreen]
> Hi
> I don't seem to be able to get this to happen, maybe I am missing somethin
g!
> What version of SQL Server are you using and are your client tools at the
> same version?
> If you need to regularly import files into SQL Server you may want to look
> at using DTS to do this, you can have jobs that regularly check any files
> dropped into a directory and upload them check out
> http://www.sqldts.com/default.aspx for lots of information on how to do th
is.
> John
> "cheesey_toastie" wrote:
>|||Hi
You can check to see if at least one of the file versions the exes for the
tools match the version returned by SELECT @.@.VERSION to see if the tools are
up to date. You may also want to post the ddl for your table.
From what you say an extra column is appearing when you choose paste from
the menus, if after you have pasted and saved the values the table
definition has not changed then I would expect things to be ok.
John
"cheesey_toastie" <bletchley_scum@.yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1160209997.605041.124600@.m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> Hi John,
> Its SQL Server 2000 (sp4), the client tools are Enterprise Manager V8.0
> I do use the DTS for files but sometimes this is quicker!! As I said
> my main concern was accidently showing a user how to do this and now I
> wonder what it is doing internally (if anything). I'm confused you cant
> replicate this behaviour. We do have a later version of SQL server on
> a test environment - I'll try it there and see if it still works.
> CT
> John Bell wrote:
>