Question

I just want to import two columns from a flat file into a new table. I have set one column, ‘Code’, to be varchar(50), and another column, ‘Description’, to be nvarchar(max).

The import fails with the following messages:

- Executing (Error)
Messages
Error 0xc02020a1: Data Flow Task 1: Data conversion failed. The data conversion for column "Description" returned status value 4 and status text "Text was truncated or one or more characters had no match in the target code page.".
 (SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)

Error 0xc020902a: Data Flow Task 1: The "output column "Description" (14)" failed because truncation occurred, and the truncation row disposition on "output column "Description" (14)" specifies failure on truncation. A truncation error occurred on the specified object of the specified component.
 (SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)

Error 0xc0202092: Data Flow Task 1: An error occurred while processing file "C:\Users\rinaldo.tempo\Desktop\ICD10_Edition4_CodesAndTitlesAndMetadata_GB_20120401.txt" on data row 3.
 (SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)

Error 0xc0047038: Data Flow Task 1: SSIS Error Code DTS_E_PRIMEOUTPUTFAILED.  The PrimeOutput method on component "Source - ICD10_Edition4_CodesAndTitlesAndMetadata_GB_20120401_txt" (1) returned error code 0xC0202092.  The component returned a failure code when the pipeline engine called PrimeOutput(). The meaning of the failure code is defined by the component, but the error is fatal and the pipeline stopped executing.  There may be error messages posted before this with more information about the failure.
 (SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)

The error message suggests to me that data is getting truncated as it’s being placed in the ‘Description’ column, which is of type nvarchar(max)! Having eyeballed the input data, I would say the descriptions are never more than around 2 or 300 characters, so this is out of the question.

Can anyone suggest what is wrong here?

Answer 1

The default size for string columns, in the import, is 50 characters. This truncation happens before data goes to your database.
You should adjust this in the first step of the Import Wizard, in the Columns section.