Home/ Questions/Q 7703799
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-31T23:32:28+00:00

I’m running a pretty standard INSERT INTO [table] (col1, col2, …coln) select * from

  • 0

I’m running a pretty standard 

INSERT INTO [table] (col1, col2, ...coln)
select * from #temp

and I’m getting the following error:

Msg 245, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Conversion failed when converting the varchar value ‘NULL’ to data type int.

I understand the error, but want to know why the column that is causing issue isn’t identified by the error message. Is there an easy way to find which column contains the naughty null or is this just a ploy to make me look like I’m being productive at work while I really just spent 30 minutes looking at a huge result set without getting anywhere?

Edit: Thanks for the help guys, but no one really answered the question. Do all RDBMS’s spew out similar error messages are or some more helpful? Its 2012…trial and error over possibly thousands of columns should be dead!

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I would look at how you populate the temp table. You appear to be getting a value of ‘null’ not NULL. If this data is coming from a Excel file, this is a common problem. I usually clease the data first by updating this way:

    Update #temp
set field1 = NULL
where field1 = 'NULL'

    If you want to do all in the same update command, then 

    Update #temp
set field1 = NULLIF(field1, 'NULL')
, field2 = NULLIF(field2, 'NULL')
, field3 = NULLIF(field3, 'NULL')
    • 0