Is it possible to BULK INSERT (SQL Server) a CSV file in which the fields are only OCCASSIONALLY surrounded by quotes? Specifically, quotes only surround those fields that contain a ",".
In other words, I have data that looks like this (the first row contain headers):
id, company, rep, employees
729216,INGRAM MICRO INC.,"Stuart, Becky",523
729235,"GREAT PLAINS ENERGY, INC.","Nelson, Beena",114
721177,GEORGE WESTON BAKERIES INC,"Hogan, Meg",253
Because the quotes aren't consistent, I can't use '","' as a delimiter, and I don't know how to create a format file that accounts for this.
I tried using ',' as a delimter and loading it into a temporary table where every column is a varchar, then using some kludgy processing to strip out the quotes, but that doesn't work either, because the fields that contain ',' are split into multiple columns.
Unfortunately, I don't have the ability to manipulate the CSV file beforehand.
Is this hopeless?
Many thanks in advance for any advice.
By the way, i saw this post SQL bulk import from csv, but in that case, EVERY field was consistently wrapped in quotes. So, in that case, he could use ',' as a delimiter, then strip out the quotes afterwards.