SQL Server FAQ - "sys.columns" - Getting a List of Columns in a Table

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By: FYIcenter.com

How To Get a List of Columns using the "sys.columns" View?

If you have an existing table, but you don't remember what are the columns defined in the table, you can use the "sys.columns" system view to get a list of all columns of all tables in the current database.

In order to a list of columns of a single table, you need to join sys.columns and sys.tables as shown in the tutorial example below:

SELECT * FROM sys.columns c, sys.tables t
   WHERE c.object_id = t.object_id
   AND t.name = 'tip'
GO
object_id   name         column_id user_type_id max_length
2073058421  id           1         56           4
2073058421  subject      2         167          80
2073058421  description  3         167          256
2073058421  create_date  4         61           8

You can see the column names easily from the sys.columns view. But you can only see the column type IDs. This requires another join to get the column type names. You may try the "sp_columns" stored procedure to get a better list of columns shown in the next tutorial.

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