Import Multiple Excel files to SQL Server

Question

I have about 40+ excel files that I would like to import to SQL Server 2012. The import wizard is a great tool but it only allows me to import one file at a time.

I want to avoid using SSIS because the import should be relatively easy - basically it is just a direct copy-paste with the first row in the Excel files being the column names, and the Excel Files name = Table Name.

Is there any easy way to achieve this?

Edited: Since the columns will change quite frequently, I would like to avoid creating the tables manually. The wizard is great because it will create the table for me automatically.

Answer 1

A solution I used is to combine multiple Excel files into one with multiple sheets. This can be done by running a VBA script (for example How to merge Excel files with VBA - thanks to Svetlana Cheusheva ) then use the SSMS import wizard to load multiple sheets into multiple tables. In my case, I have 160 files, but they are not very big — 100 to 10000 rows — and it worked perfectly for me.

Answer 2

You can do it using OpenRowSet. The OPENROWSET function can be referenced in the FROM clause of a query as though it is a table name.

Read excel using the following SELECT statement together with the OPENROWSET function

SELECT * 
FROM OPENROWSET('Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0',
                'Excel 8.0;Database=C:\Source\Addresses.xls;IMEX=1',
                'SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]')

To import this to a SQL Server table without using DTS, since you are able to read the data using the SELECT statement, you can simply add the INTO clause to insert the records into a new SQL Server table.

SELECT * 
INTO [dbo].[Addresses_NewTable]
FROM OPENROWSET('Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0',
                'Excel 8.0;Database=C:\Source\Addresses.xls;IMEX=1',
                'SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]')

Reference article:- http://www.sql-server-helper.com/tips/read-import-excel-file-p03.aspx

Answer 3

It may be more research than you want to put into your problem, but you might also look into using BIML to script out the tedious and numerous similar packages.

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/stairway/100550/ http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/3094/introduction-to-business-intelligence-markup-language-biml-for-ssis/

Answer 4

Use Kutools for Excel to merge the worksheets across workbooks into one worksheet in a new workbook and then load that.

https://www.extendoffice.com/product/kutools-for-excel/merge-excel-wordbooks.html#a4

That's what I'm doing.