ORA-22929: invalid or missing directory name and ORA-06564: object Xyz does not exist

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You can see this error when executing a command like:

ALTER TABLE IMP_BAD_BOXES
DEFAULT DIRECTORY 'IMPORT_DIR';

ORA-22929: invalid or missing directory name

The problem is in the single quotes surrounding the directory object name.
The same error is also returned when using a CREATE TABLE statement.

The correct syntax requires either double quotes for case sensitive names or no quotes at all for case insensitive names.

ALTER TABLE IMP_BAD_BOXES
DEFAULT DIRECTORY "Import_Dir";

or

ALTER TABLE IMP_BAD_BOXES
DEFAULT DIRECTORY import_dir;

The last statement is equivalent to :

ALTER TABLE IMP_BAD_BOXES
DEFAULT DIRECTORY "IMPORT_DIR";

Note that when using case sensitive names, if you mistype the name you'll get:

ORA-06564: object Import_Dir does not exist

See message translations for ORA-22929, ORA-06564 and search additional resources.