Needing some sort of variation or at least a break from my certification studies I decided to revisit a title I purchased a while back: "Beginning SQL Server 2008 for Developers" from @Apress written by Robin Dewson. Truly glad I did because one of the problems I have when illustrating data related issues to clients is having to piece together a bloody spreadsheet. I typically would query the tables then query the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS or sys.columns to get the column names to use as headers. Then I would copy and paste them into the predetermined rows.
Well not any more because page 42-43 of this awesome book had life changing screenshots of the Options dialog. Big deal right? Well a big deal for me at least! Following the path of Query Results --> SQL Server --> Results to Grid lead me to a sudden state of euphoria. There I saw it as the lights of heaven filled my home, blurring everything around me as if a spotlight and magnify focused in on the wonderful words that read: "Include column headers when copying or saving the results". Was it really true, are my days of querying sys.columns or the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS finally over? In a way, maybe, not really, but at the very least delivering requested spreadsheets to clients will be a bit faster. I was so excited I tried this on MSSQL 2005 and sure enough it is there!
What you need to do is:
Step 1 - Go to Tools --> Options
Step 2 - Expand Query Results --> SQL Server --> Results to Grid
Then check the box titled: Include column headers when copying or saving the results
Step 3 - Copy some cells
If you have tabs opened already, open a new query window and try it. You should see the menu item "Copy with Headers" as a right click option
Step 4 - Then paste your results into the spreadsheet
Just a side note, if you are dealing with datetime data types you should consider making the predetermined columns in the spreadsheet as a text category by formatting the cells, under the Number tab select the "Text" category.
Cover image taken from Apress.
