Here is a tip about a setting that I think should be on by default, but it isn’t. How many times are you writing T-SQL in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and you need to just copy the results out, paste to Excel and either do more analysis or send off to someone. What happens when you have a result set with 20 columns? 30? 50?

Well, the old way to get the column headings in Excel was to just type them in. Ouch. This gets old realllly fast. But there is a setting in SSMS that most people don’t even know exists, and then once they find out about it, they are like, dang! I wish I would have known about that.

Well, fire up SSMS, Tools->Options, Query Results, SQL Server, Results to Grid. Then check the “Include column headers when copying or saving the results” Hit OK, and the any new query window you have will automatically copy the column headings from your result set with the data!

 

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