Convert SSMS .rpt output file to .txt/.csv

Question

I want to export my big SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio) query result (2.5m lines, 9 fields) as .csv or comma-delimited .txt (with headings). (MS SQL Server 2005 Management Studio.)

So that I can then either read it line-by-line into VBA program (to do certain calculations on the data) or do queries on it in Excel (e.g. with Microsoft Query). The calculations are complicated and I prefer to do it somewhere else than SSMS.

If I choose ‘query result to text’ in SSMS and a small answer (few lines e.g. up to 200k) I could of course simply copy and paste to a text editor. For my large answer here I could of course copy and paste 200k or so lines at a time, 10 times, into a text editor like Ultra-Edit. (When I try all 2.5m at once, I get a memory warning inside SSMS.) But for the future I’d like a more elegant solution.

For ‘query result to file’, SSMS writes to an .rpt file always. (When you right-click in the results window and choose ‘save as’, it gives a memory error just like above.)

--> So it looks like my only option is to have SSMS output its result to a file i.e. .rpt and then afterwards, convert the .rpt to .txt.

I assume this .rpt is a Crystal Reports file? Or isn't it. I don’t have Crystal Reports on my PC, so I cannot use that to convert the file.

When opening the .rpt in Ultra-Edit it looks fine. However in Microsoft Query in Excel, the headings doesn’t want to show.

When I simply read & write the .rpt using VBA, the file halves in size. (330meg to 180meg). In Microsoft Query the headings do show now (though the first field name has a funny leading character, which has happened to me before in other totally different situations). I do seem to be able to do meaningful pivot tables on it in Excel.

However when I open this new file in Ultra-Edit, it shows Chinese characters! Could there still be some funny characters in it somewhere?

--> Is there perhaps a free (and simple/ safe) converter app available somewhere. Or should I just trust that this .txt is fine for reading into my VBA program.

Thanks

Answer 1

Simple way: In SQL Server Management Studio, go to the "Query" menu & select "Query Options…" > Results > Text > Change "Output Format" to "Comma Delimited". Now, run your query to export to a file, and once done rename the file from .rpt to .csv and it will open in Excel :).

Answer 2

Here is my solution.

• Use Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio
• Configure it to save Tab delimited .rpt files: Go to 'Query' > 'Query Options' > 'Results' > 'Text' > 'Output Format' and choose 'Tab delimited' (press OK)

• Now, when you create a report, use the 'Save With Encoding...' menu, and select 'Unicode' (by default, it's 'UTF8')

• You can now open the file with Excel, and everything will be in columns, with no escaping nor foreign characters issues (note the file may be bigger due to unicode encoding).