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sql-serversql-server-2012identity

Auto increment primary key in SQL Server Management Studio 2012

How do I auto increment the primary key in a SQL Server database table? I've had a look through the forum but can't see how to do this.

I've looked at the properties but can't see an option. I saw an answer where you go to the Identity specification property and set it to yes and set the Identity increment to 1, but that section is grayed out and I can't change the no to yes.

There must be a simple way to do this but I can't find it.

Solution

  • Make sure that the Key column's datatype is int and then setting identity manually, as image shows

    enter image description here

    Or just run this code utilizing IDENTITY(seed, increment) modifier

    -- ID is the name of the  [to be] identity column
ALTER TABLE [yourTable] DROP COLUMN ID 
ALTER TABLE [yourTable] ADD ID INT IDENTITY(1,1)

    the code will run, if ID is not the only column in the table

    image reference fifo's