Import Excel Data into MySQL in 5 Easy Steps

This is probably nothing new to many, but I spent quite some time to figure it out so I thought I’d post my notes on it.

To import data from Excel (or any other program that can produce a text file) is very simple using the LOAD DATA command from the MySQL Command prompt.

1. Save your Excel data as a csv file (In Excel 2007 using Save As)
2. Check the saved file using a text editor such as Notepad to see what it actually looks like, i.e. what delimiter was used etc.
3. Start the MySQL Command Prompt (I’m lazy so I usually do this from the MySQL Query Browser – Tools – MySQL Command Line Client to avoid having to enter username and password etc.)
4. Enter this command:
   LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE ‘C:\\temp\\yourfile.csv’ INTO TABLE database.table FIELDS TERMINATED BY ‘;’ ENCLOSED BY ‘”‘ LINES TERMINATED BY ‘\r\n’ (field1, field2);
   [Edit: Make sure to check your single quotes (') and double quotes (") if you copy and paste this code - it seems WordPress is changing them into some similar but different characters]
5. Done!