Change Column Order in a Table

  • Article

You can change the order of columns in Table Designer in SQL Server 2012 by using SQL Server Management Studio.

Warning

Changing the column order of a table may affect code and applications that depend on the specific order of columns. These include queries, views, stored procedures, user-defined functions, and client applications. Carefully consider any changes you want to make to column order before making it. Best practice is to specify the order in which the columns are returned at the application and query level. You should not rely on the use of SELECT * to return all columns in an expected order based on the order in which they are defined in the table. Always specify the columns by name in your queries and applications in the order in which you would like them to appear.

In This Topic

  • To change the column order, using:

    SQL Server Management Studio

    Transact-SQL

Using SQL Server Management Studio

To change the column order

  1. In Object Explorer, right-click the table with columns you want to reorder and click Design.

  2. Select the box to the left of the column name that you want to reorder.

  3. Drag the column to another location within the table.

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Using Transact-SQL

To change the column order

This task cannot be performed using Transact-SQL statements.

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