Ssms-Tips-Tricks

One of the problems with applications that have highly-configurable user interfaces (UI) is that users can end up configuring them in ways they hadn’t intended, and then don’t know how to get back to where they were.

I remember the first time that I was at a session with a presenter from Microsoft showing the (at the time) new personalization options in ASP.NET. You could build a website and let the user determine how the site should be laid out, to suit themselves.

2025-10-04

When you get to a large number of query windows or other documents open as tabs in SSMS, it can start to be difficult to keep track of them, and to find them when needed.

It’s not too bad when you can immediately find the tab that you want in the drop-down list:

But if you have more tabs than are shown in this drop-down list or if, like me, you often end up with many of them without names (as they are temporary), it can get very hard to find the few that you are mainly referring to.

2025-10-02

SSMS is a great tool for working with SQL Server relational databases but it can do much more than that.

In Object Explorer, note that you can easily connect to other types of services:

For a long time, it has been able to connect to Analysis Services to manage SSAS databases, both tabular and multi-dimensional. It can connect to Integration Services but that’s to the older style interface for SSIS. Nowadays, you should use the SSIS Catalog instead. There are a few items that you can configure via the Reporting Services connection as well.

2025-09-30

SSMS is a great tool for working with SQL Server relational databases but it can do much more than that.

One of our most popular offerings is our SQL Server Management Studio Tips and Tricks eBook . And it’s just been updated to cover v21 of SSMS with our 2025 release.

It’s hard to describe how much work it has been to create this update, but we’re proud of the outcome and hope you’ll find it really interesting.

2025-09-29

If you have ever started SSMS in an isolated environment (ie: one with no external Internet connectivity), you’ll find that it’s slower to start.

That’s because SQL Server uses signed assemblies, and whenever an application with signed assemblies starts, it needs to check whether or not the certificate that they were signed with has been revoked. It’s not good enough to just check if it’s a valid certificate.

Certificates include a CRL (Certificate Revocation List) and this tells an application that’s trusting the certificate where to check for a list of revoked certificates.

2025-09-28

I’m puzzled that so few people use script projects and solutions when working with SSMS.

They are easy to use. Let’s see an example:

Instead of just starting to create scripts, from the File menu, click New, then Project. You are greeted with the new Project dialog which also allows you to create a solution.

I’ve selected SQL Server Scripts as the project template and Next:

To get to the point faster, here’s one that I created earlier:

2025-09-26

You don’t always want to run SSMS as your current login for Windows.

Now if all you want to do is to use a SQL Server login, then that’s easy. When you connect to a server in Object Explorer, or when you start a new Database Engine query, you can just choose SQL authentication instead.

But three other scenarios commonly occur.

If you need to run SSMS as an administrator on a machine with UAC, you can do this:

2025-09-24

Back when SSMS for SQL Server 2016 was released, a search tool called Quick Launch was added. It was this bar up the top of previous versions:

Note there was also another bar underneath it to the left. That was the Find bar. While the Find bar was useful for searching for text within queries, etc., the Quick Launch bar was useful for searching within SSMS itself. This was great because it means you don’t have to remember where all the options for various things are set. Here was an example:

2025-09-22

This one is a very simple and quick tip.

When working in SSMS, I often need to open Windows File Explorer in the folder where the script file is stored. Turns out there is an easy way to do that.

There are two interesting options when you right-click the tab at the top of a query window. (Note: not on the File menu)

Note that you can open the containing folder for the script. You can also copy the path to the script into the clipboard.

2025-09-20

Every now and again, I come back to my laptop and find that it has rebooted for some reason, while I wasn’t expecting it. A prime cause of that is Windows Updates. I really, really wish that wasn’t so, but someone at Microsoft has decided that I must apply these updates. I have very little control over the time when that occurs. For example, if I’m on the road delivering presentations, there’s no “wait till I get home” option for Windows Updates.

2025-09-18