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Showing posts with label Add or Modify IDENTITY property to an existing column. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Add or Modify IDENTITY property to an existing column. Show all posts

Monday, July 9, 2012

Add or Modify IDENTITY property to an existing column

Method 1
Easiest method is to use SSMS to change the property.
  • Goto SQL Server Management Studio
  • Right click on the table name
  • Choose Design/Modify
  • Choose the column which needs to be set as Identity
  • At the bottom window (Column Properties) for that column you can see "Identity Specification" has been by default set to "NO".
  • Just change it to "YES" and save the table (CTRL + S).
Method 2

If there is no data in the table then use this method.

Drop the already exist column 
ALTER TABLE TempTable DROP Column ID;
GO;
Now add the ID column again with Identity specification on.
Alter Table TempTable Add ID INT IDENTITY
GO 

Method 3

If there is data in the table then use this method.
  • Create a new table with identity column
  • Enable IDENTITY_INSERT for this new table
  • Move the data from this old table to this new table.
  • Disable IDENTITY_INSERT for this new table
  • Delete the old table.
  • Rename the newtable with the oldtable name.