Tips and Notes for Using the bcp Utility

It is possible to specify the number of rows to load from the data file rather than loading the entire data file. For example, to load only the first 150 rows from a 10,000 row data file, specify the -L last_row parameter when loading the data. This can be useful for testing a batch load process.
When using the -F first_row parameter to specify the first row in the table or view to start bulk copying data from Microsoft® SQL Server™ to a data file, all rows in the table or view are first returned to the client, and then the bcp utility determines which rows to skip and write to the data file. Therefore, specifying -F first_row does not limit the amount of data returned to the client and does not cause the bulk copy operation to necessarily execute any faster.
Because SQL Server can use parallel scans to retrieve data, the data bulk copied from SQL Server is not guaranteed to be in any specific order unless you bulk copy data from a query and specify an ORDER BY clause.
To copy data from earlier versions of SQL Server using native format data files, use the same version of bcp for importing, exporting, and formatting files.