I get a file from another department that contains an id column. The id column is mostly numbers, but also contains some letters.
I receive the file in XLS format.
When I try to use the import function of SQL, it reads the id column as a double integer type. Is that not incorrect? Can double datatype have letters? Either way, it is correctly importing the number values for the id, but not the values that begin with letters. It also does not advise of any errors or problems.
I have tried to convert it to a flat file and import it that way, but I am fighting with the date column data types as well. (They are in 1/13/2011 format - I don't know why the import wizard can't import this either).
I would like the end result to be a nvarchar. How can I go about getting this file to convert properly?