Question

I have a relatively complicated excel sheet in which columns start at A and end at BB and rows start at 5 and end at 203.

What I would like to do is tell MySQL that each column of data (with a header that I do not specify in the sheet) should start at row 5 and end at row 203 and specific exactly which columns I would like transferred. How might I do that?

Thanks for the help!

Edit: There is unrelated data below row 203 and I don’t want that to be taken. There are also blank columns, so I need to avoid those.

Answer 1

First off, save your excel sheet as CSV.

Next. Create a blackhole table to read the data into:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `test`.`import_excel`;
CREATE TABLE  `test`.`import_excel` (
  `A` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
  `B` varchar(45) NOT NULL,
  `C` varchar(45) NOT NULL,
  `D` varchar(45) NOT NULL,
  `E` varchar(45) NOT NULL,
  .....
  `BB` varchar(45) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=BLACKHOLE DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Create a simple counter table with just one row.

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `test`.`counter`;
CREATE TABLE  `test`.`counter` (
  id int(10) unsigned NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
  `count` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
  `max_count` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL
) ENGINE=MEMORY DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

REPLACE INTO counter VALUES (1,0,(203-5));

Create a trigger on the blackhole table

DELIMITER $$

CREATE TRIGGER ai_import_excel_each AFTER INSERT ON import_excel FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
  DECLARE rows_left integer;

  SELECT max_count - (`count` + 1)  INTO rows_left FROM counter WHERE id = 1;
  IF rows_left > 0 THEN BEGIN
    //count the row_number you're in.
    UPDATE counter SET `count` = `count` + 1 WHERE id = 1;

    //Interpret the data and insert it into the proper tables.
    //This is just an example
    INSERT INTO real_table (a,b,c) VALUES (new.a, new.b, new.c);
    INSERT INTO real_table2 (a,b,c) VALUES (NULLIF(new.d,''), new.e, new.c);
    //You can change the data in anyway you like.
  END; END IF;
END $$

DELIMITER ;

Finally import lines 5 to 203 into the import_excel table.

LOAD DATA INFILE 'c:/excel.csv' INTO TABLE import_excel 
  FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"'
  LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n'
  IGNORE 4 LINES;

The first 4 lines will be ignored by the LOAD DATA INFILE the last lines will be stripped out by the trigger.