Convert CSV to Microsoft SQL Server

Upload a .csv or .tsv file and get back a Microsoft SQL Server SQL script you can load straight into your database. Types are preserved rather than flattened to text. Free, no registration, up to 10MB.

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CSV, Excel, SQLite, SQL, DBF (max 10 MB)

How your data is typed in Microsoft SQL Server

Generated from the converter's own Microsoft SQL Server type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.

Your dataMicrosoft SQL Server type
Whole numberBIGINT
Decimal (money)DECIMAL(10,2)
Floating pointFLOAT
True / falseBIT
DateDATE
Date and timeDATETIME2
Short textNVARCHAR(255)
Long textNVARCHAR(MAX)
Binary dataVARBINARY(MAX)

Working from a .csv file

A CSV file carries no header describing itself, so everything about it - the separator, the encoding, whether an empty field means nothing or means zero - has to be worked out from the bytes. That is where the risk in this conversion lives.

  • The separator is sniffed from the first 4 KB across comma, semicolon, tab and pipe, so a semicolon-separated file saved by Excel in a European locale needs no setting.
  • The UTF-8 byte-order mark Excel writes is stripped before the header row is read, so your first column is not named with an invisible character in front of it.
  • Types are decided from the first 10,000 data rows. A value further down that contradicts the type it settled on becomes NULL rather than failing the whole file.
  • The table is named after the file, with spaces and hyphens replaced by underscores: sales report.csv becomes sales_report.

Which SQL Server this runs on

Microsoft SQL Server is the full product name, and it covers a wide range of places to put a database: Express on a laptop, a Developer instance, a Linux container, a managed Azure SQL database. The script was written not to care which of them it lands in.

  • There is no CREATE DATABASE, no USE, and no filegroup or collation clause anywhere in the file, so nothing in it can be refused by an edition that forbids those. Which database it populates is decided by your client's connection.
  • No schema is named either, so the tables land in the default schema of whichever login runs the script - dbo for most logins. Moving them elsewhere afterwards is an ALTER SCHEMA ... TRANSFER.
  • The primary key is emitted as an unnamed constraint, which the server materialises as a clustered index under a name it invents. Nothing else is indexed, so any index the source carried has to be rebuilt by hand.

Reading CSV

  • Leading zeros are preserved. A column containing 01234 is kept as text, never turned into the number 1234.
  • An empty cell becomes NULL, not an empty string — the two mean different things once the data is in a database.
  • Dates are only treated as dates when the format is unambiguous. 03/04/2025 could be March 4th or April 3rd, so it stays text unless another value in the column settles it.

Writing Microsoft SQL Server

  • String literals carry the N prefix, so non-ASCII text survives whatever collation the database uses.
  • Timestamps become DATETIME2. T-SQL’s TIMESTAMP is a row-version counter, not a point in time.
  • Identity columns are wrapped in SET IDENTITY_INSERT so explicit key values load.
  • Statements are separated with GO in batches.

What you get

A ZIP containing dump.sql, plus a README with the exact command to load it. If anything about your data needed a judgement call, a _warnings.txt explains it.

Load this dump into SQL Server:

  sqlcmd -S HOST -U USER -P PASSWORD -d DATABASE -i dump.sql

Notes:

  - Text columns are NVARCHAR and literals carry the N prefix, so
    non-ASCII data survives regardless of database collation.
  - Timestamps are DATETIME2. T-SQL's TIMESTAMP type is a row
    version, not a point in time.

Questions

Is converting CSV to Microsoft SQL Server free?
Yes. Files up to 10MB convert free with no account. There is a limit of five conversions per day per IP address.
Will my CSV data keep its types in Microsoft SQL Server?
Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real Microsoft SQL Server types rather than everything becoming text. The mapping table above shows exactly what you get.
Do you store my file?
No. The file is written to a temporary directory, converted, and the directory is deleted as soon as your download has been sent.

This conversion, under other names

Convert CSV to something else

Convert something else to Microsoft SQL Server