I had a similar situation here:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1441088-149-1.aspx

It turned out that Unicode characters don't store properly in VARCHAR columns, and I had to change them to NVARCHAR.

Beyond that, I can tell...

Just a quick note on sample data generation, (forgive me) without reading all 18 pages of this thread.

I altered what you posted to run like this, because if there's a...

My mind is so blown by what happens when you rename a .xlsx file to .zip and open it that I don't care if you go entirely off topic about...

Elliott Whitlow (7/10/2013)

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I looked at the output and immediately latched onto the first 2 characters, PK, are you sure this is an XLS file and not a ZIP file maybe...

mister.magoo (7/10/2013)

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Do you have any mapped drives on the sql server under that domain account?

If so, can you copy the file to one of those and see if you can...

Wacky stuff indeed! Trying to read it out loud kind of makes me feel like handling venomous snakes.

Elliott Whitlow (7/10/2013)

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erikd (7/10/2013)

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I've given the clients\SQLService user explicit rights to the folder. from Full Control on down. Nothing is denied. I immediately ran the query, and got the same...

I've given the clients\SQLService user explicit rights to the folder. from Full Control on down. Nothing is denied. I immediately ran the query, and got the same error as my...

Elliott Whitlow (7/10/2013)

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erikd (7/10/2013)

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Elliott Whitlow (7/10/2013)

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erikd (7/10/2013)

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I checked that, actually. Not only can I use xp_cmdshell to DIR the path, but I can insert the results into a table. Weird,...

Sean, that looks awesome.

Lowell, if you mean the folder full of all your wisely written code that a scrub could learn from, then yes. Otherwise, I can probably set...

Elliott Whitlow (7/10/2013)

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You might have...

Thanks, Lowell. Is your library at all portable? I find myself working from several computers, and several more term servers, so it's helpful for me to be able to access...

I checked that, actually. Not only can I use xp_cmdshell to DIR the path, but I can insert the results into a table. Weird, huh?

Elliott Whitlow (7/10/2013)

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erikd (7/10/2013)

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Hi,

We already have SQL running with a domain account called clients\SQLService, which I'm told has every permission in the book allowed to it. The server proxy account...

Hi,

We already have SQL running with a domain account called clients\SQLService, which I'm told has every permission in the book allowed to it. The server proxy account in SSMS is...