Convert CSV to T-SQL

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

Click to upload or drag and drop

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

How your data is typed in T-SQL

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

Your dataT-SQL 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.

The T-SQL the script actually uses

T-SQL is the language rather than the product, and it is exactly where a generic ANSI SQL script fails against SQL Server. Two of those differences are why this target has a dialect of its own instead of reusing the shared one.

  • Date and timestamp values are written as ordinary quoted strings. The ANSI typed literal - the word DATE in front of a quoted date - is not T-SQL, and the server rejects it, which on its own is enough to make a portable script fail to load.
  • GO is not a statement in the language at all. sqlcmd, SSMS and Azure Data Studio read it as a batch separator and the server never sees it, so a driver handed the whole file as one string chokes on it: run the file through one of those clients, or split the text on its GO lines and send the pieces in order down the same connection.
  • Rows are written 500 to a statement, comfortably under the 1000-row ceiling T-SQL puts on a single VALUES list. That ceiling is what makes a script built around one statement per table fail on any table worth converting.

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 T-SQL

  • 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 T-SQL 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 T-SQL?
Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real T-SQL 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

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