Well done. When I receive data from external sources, I find it to be less than spectacular quality. Fields that are supposed to contain dates contain strings, numeric fields contain alphanumeric data and string data doesn't conform to the agreed-to maximum length, etc. This is why I try to bring it into an empty table of large varchar and nvarchar fields. From there I can clean and put it into a real table that I'll actually use. Sad but necessary.

Thanks for posting the notes on your resolution to the problem. Since it's a problem I encounter frequently, I was interested in the final solution you implemented.