MySQL Tutorial MySQL Advanced MySQL Database Account Management MySQL References

MySQL ALTER COLUMN Keyword



The MySQL ALTER COLUMN keyword is used to change the data type of a column in an existing table.

Syntax

The syntax for using ALTER COLUMN statement to modify datatype of a column in MySQL is given below:

ALTER TABLE table_name
MODIFY COLUMN column_name datatype;

Example:

Consider a database table called Employee with the following records:

EmpIDNameCityAge
1JohnLondon25
2MarryNew York24
3JoParis27
4KimAmsterdam30

In this table, the datatype of City column is VARCHAR(100). To change the datatype of the column to VARCHAR(255), the statement is given below:

ALTER TABLE Employee
MODIFY COLUMN City VARCHAR(255);

This will change the datatype of City column from VARCHAR(100) to VARCHAR(255). For a complete reference of all the data types available in MySQL, see Data Types reference.


❮ MySQL Keywords