title: Is there a way around the 8k row length limit in SQL Server?
body: <p>First off, I know that in general having large numbers of wide columns is a bad idea, but this is the format I'm constrained to.</p>
  
  <p>I have an application that imports CSV files into a staging table before manipulating them and inserting/updating values in the database. The staging table is created on the fly and has a variable number of NVARCHAR colums into which the file is imported, plus two INT columns used as row IDs.</p>
  
  <p>One particular file I have to import is about 450 columns wide. With the 24 byte pointer used in a large NVARCHAR column, this adds up to around 10k by my calculations, and I get the error <code>Cannot create a row of size 11166 which is greater than the allowable maximum row size of 8060.</code></p>
  
  <p>Is there a way around this or are my only choices modifying the importer to split the import or removing columns from the file?</p>