Toad for Oracle – General Q&A

Q: How to import data from an Excel file into a table?

A: See Toadworld blog post "Create and Load Oracle Tables from Excel Spreadsheet using Toad“

Q: I have a flat file (.csv, tab delimited, etc.) and I want to import the data to a table. What is the best way to do that using TOAD?

A: For a relatively small file (a few thousand rows) try Database → Import → Table Data. It's very easy to use, and the whole load takes place within TOAD. For a large file, use DBA → SQL Loader wizard. That lets you set up a control file for Oracle’s SQL*Loader utility and run it. Of course, if you use this you will need to have the Oracle SQL*Loader installed on your client. See the Help file with its "SQL*Loader Wizard tutorial" for more information.

Q: My procedure editor toolbar icon is grayed out, and there are some other things on the Create menu that are grayed out. I can't edit any of the data grids, either. What's going on?

A: Somehow, your TOAD has become read only. There are 3 possibilities.

• One possibility is that the file "readonly.lic" has been copied over "toad.lic". To see if this is the problem, replace the "toad.lic" file in your Toad directory with "fulltoad.lic" and then restart TOAD. If you do not have a "toad.lic" or "fulltoad.lic" at all, then you will need to reinstall TOAD.
• Another possibility is that someone has implemented TOAD Security on your database and made your user or one of your roles read only. Run the following query:

select user_name, feature 
  from toad.toad_restrictions
  where user_name=USER or user_name in
    (select ROLE from session_roles)

If one of the results that comes back contains "Read only override", then that's the problem. Your TOAD will be read only unless you have the DBA role.

• A third possibility is that you have a read-only version of the TOAD executable. This would only happen if you downloaded the read only installation from Quest's website.

Q: When I FTP, why are my filenames blank or corrupted?

A: Your FTP Server is returning an unknown format of LIST (Long dIrectory LisTing). You may workaround this by setting your default FTP directory to ‘/’ at the login screen.

Q: When I try to FTP a file or even list a directory, i get a 'RETR command not understood' error message. What's the problem?

A: The problem is that this server is non RFC compliant. The RETR request asks the server to send the contents of a file over the data connection already established by the client as specified in the FTP RFC. Our components are build to be RFC compliant and it is sending the RETR cmd, which the server is not recognizing.