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I'm looking for a way to do multiple row inserts when I'm only inserting data for a single column.

Here is the example table:

+-------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type        | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+-------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id    | tinyint(4)  | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment | 
| name  | varchar(40) | NO   | UNI | NULL    |                | 
+-------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

I want to be able to insert something like ('admin', 'author', 'mod', 'user', 'guest') into the name column for each row.

The MySQL documentation shows that multiple inserts should be in the format:

INSERT INTO tbl_name (a,b,c) VALUES(1,2,3),(4,5,6),(7,8,9);

However my statement ends up looking like this:

INSERT INTO User_Role(name) VALUES ('admin','author','mod','user','guest');

And I get the following:
ERROR 1136 (21S01): Column count doesn't match value count at row 1

Meaning that it thinks I'm trying to do a single row insert.

I'm not sure if I'm just missing something simple here, but I don't see anything in particular in the MySQL docs for this use case.

Jessica Brown
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tsgrasser
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2 Answers2

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your syntax is a bit off. put parentheses around each data "set" (meaning a single value in this case) that you are trying to insert.

INSERT INTO User_Roll(name) VALUES ('admin'), ('author'), ('mod'), ('user'), ('guest');
Scott M.
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  • Ah, thanks! First time working with the multi insert syntax. I'll accept once it lets me – tsgrasser Jul 28 '10 at 18:58
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    you should also be aware that this doesnt work in MSSQL. MySQL and a couple others support multiple inserts, but last time I used SQL Server it didn't accept that syntax. – Scott M. Jul 28 '10 at 19:01
  • I know this is a very old answer, but just thought I'd mention that as of version 2008, this also works in MSSQL. – user1751825 Dec 22 '16 at 03:18
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I will advise you Don't put multiple values in a column. make a new table:

     INSERT INTO table_name (id, name) VALUES (1, 'name1'), (1, 'name2'), (1, 'name3'), (1, 'name4');
Pooja Khatri
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