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T-SQL - ALTER COLUMN Keyword



The T-SQL (Transact-SQL) 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 T-SQL (Transact-SQL) is given below:

ALTER TABLE table_name
ALTER 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 T-SQL code is given below:

ALTER TABLE Employee
ALTER 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 T-SQL, see Data Types reference.


❮ T-SQL Keywords