SSMS Tips and Tricks - Part 01

I have been using SSMS for so many years now, but here is a trick I learned recently.

Let say you are working on a query window (not query designer), probably with a existing query and you need to add a table with very large number of columns and select all columns by name (rather than using SELECT *).

What is the best way to do this? You can type the query by hand and write all those column names one by one. But that would be laborious/tedious.

Here is a better approach:

Type the query in SELECT * <<table>> format.

Now select the whole line in query window and press Control + Shift + Q key combination.

Viola: Query designer window appear with your query in designer window.

Now, if you just want to add all column to query window, just press ok on Query Designer window.

Query window's query will update to have all column names:

Or you can further edit the query in Query designer window (e.g. add another table) then press ok button when you finish. What ever the query you designed in designer window will write into your query window.

That was very convenient and saved lot of time for me last week.

Also, did you know you can right click on a table in Query Designer and select all column in that table.