DataByte for SSMS 2026.10.22.1227
New
- Qualify Columns. Press Ctrl+K, Ctrl+Q (or right-click in the query editor and choose Qualify Columns) to give every table in a SELECT an alias and put that alias in front of each of its columns:
SELECT FName, City FROM Person JOIN Address ON Person.AddressId = Address.AddressIdbecomesSELECT p.FName, a.City FROM Person p JOIN Address a ON p.AddressId = a.AddressId. It works on the selection, or the whole script when nothing is selected, and one Ctrl+Z undoes it. Aliases you have already written are kept, the new ones are the same initials IntelliSense uses, and qualifiers that name a table by its own name (Person.AddressId,dbo.Person.*) switch to the alias. Which table a column belongs to comes from the schema cache, and a column is only prefixed when exactly one table has it: a column found in more than one table, one that is not found (such as a select-list alias in ORDER BY), or one in a query that also reads from something whose columns are not known (OPENJSON, PIVOT, a table not in the cache) is left as written, and the status bar says how many were. Subqueries, CTEs, derived tables, CROSS APPLY, temp tables and table variables are handled; the table an UPDATE, DELETE, MERGE or INSERT writes to is not aliased, but the SELECTs inside those statements are. Your layout and comments are left as they were. If the schema cache for the database has not loaded yet, it starts loading and asks you to try again. Thanks to @walterstypula for the suggestion (#3).