Msg 8152, String or binary data would be truncated - sql-server

Question

I have this table:
CREATE TABLE Vendors
(
VendorID NUMERIC(10) NOT NULL,
VendorName CHAR(50) NOT NULL,
VendorAddress VARCHAR(30) NULL,
VendorCityName VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL,
VendorStateName CHAR(2) NOT NULL,
VendorZip VARCHAR(10) NULL,
VendorContactName CHAR(50) NOT NULL,
VendorContactPhone VARCHAR(12) NOT NULL,
VendorContactEmail VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL,
VendorSpecialty CHAR(20) NOT NULL
CONSTRAINT VendorsPK PRIMARY KEY (VendorID)
);
And this insert:
INSERT INTO Vendors(VendorID, VendorName, VendorAddress,
VendorCityName, VendorStateName, VendorZip, VendorContactName,
VendorContactPhone, VendorContactEmail, VendorSpecialty)
VALUES(151330, 'Hyperion', '77 West 66th Street', 'New York',
'NY', 10023, 'John Hinks', '212-337-6564',
'jhinks#hyperionbooks.com', 'Popular fiction')
Why does this statement yield the 8152 error?

Answer 1

VendorContactEmail is only 20 bytes. Your e-mail address on the first line (jhinks#hyperionbooks.com) is longer than that - 24 bytes. And many e-mail addresses will be longer. Who decided to only allow 20 characters in the e-mail address column? According to the standard, this should be VARCHAR(320) - 64 characters for <localpart> + 1 for # + 255 for <domain>.
As for the error message itself, finding the culprit is easier today than it was back then.
String or Binary data would be truncated: replacing the infamous error 8152

Answer 2

How to Force an Operation that Results in Truncation to Execute Anyway
Do you know what truncation is?
Do you know what is going to be truncated?
Is it your intention to truncate long data to fit?
If and and only if you answer YES to the above questions, you can force your inserts to ignore the warning and run anyway. If you answered no to any of the above, read on.
SET ANSI_WARNINGS OFF;
-- Your operation TSQL here.
SET ANSI_WARNINGS ON;
(source)
What is Truncation in this Context
Truncation is simply putting as much of a value as will fit into the column and then discarding any portion that doesn't fit. For example, truncating The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog to 13 characters would be The quick bro
Why would I receive this error message
You receive this error when you attempt to insert data that won't fit into a destination column definition because the data is too short.
I'm trying to insert many rows of data and want to determine which rows don't fit
Aaron's excellent answer notes that if you are running SQL Server 2019 or newer, you'll actually get a message that contains the column and value that won't fit - which is awesome! But if you aren't running a version that new, read on for tips.
If you receive this error message while attempting to bulk insert many rows of data, you might try splitting the insert into multiple inserts and running them separately to narrow down where the long value is.
Alternatively, you could insert the data into a new temp table and search said temp table for values that won't fit into your destination table.
--(insert into new temp table #Vendors)
INSERT INTO #Vendors(VendorID, VendorName, VendorAddress,
VendorCityName, VendorStateName, VendorZip, VendorContactName,
VendorContactPhone, VendorContactEmail, VendorSpecialty)
VALUES(151330, 'Hyperion', '77 West 66th Street', 'New York',
'NY', 10023, 'John Hinks', '212-337-6564',
'jhinks#hyperionbooks.com', 'Popular fiction')
Then query for rows that don't fit.
--(query for values that don't fit)
SELECT *,
LEN(VendorContactEmail) AS Length
FROM #Vendors
WHERE LEN(VendorContactEmail) > 20 --set your destination column length is here
See also LEN and DATALENGTH documentation for information on whitespace handling and binary data lengths.

Answer 3

You can also minimize the length of column values by using following expression:
LEFT(columnName, 250) + '...'
I tried and it works.