Need help with T-SQL to combine email addresses

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Need help with T-SQL to combine email addresses

pbyrum

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Points: 2785
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August 2, 2013 at 12:04 pm

#296456

Hello,
I am trying to get email addresses in column and concatenate them into a long string, separated by semi-column ";". So, the results would be like:
bob@company.com; mary@company.org;paul@company.com;susan@company.net
I have this T-SQL below and I am using a while loop that does not work, but I am wondering if I a cursor would work better. I am not sure, as what is below is not working. Can you help me with this query to get the results?
declare @emails as varchar(5000)
while exists (select People.cEmail from dbo.People)
begin
set @emails = cEmail + ';' + @emails
end
Thanks.

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Luis Cazares SSC Guru Points: 183706 More actions · Answer 1

There's no need for a cursor or a while loop. Check the following article to solve your problem.

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/comma+separated+list/71700/

Luis C.
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Are you seriously taking the advice and code from someone from the internet without testing it? Do you at least understand it? Or can it easily kill your server?

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Sean Lange SSC Guru Points: 286590 More actions · Answer 2

If you don't need any grouping and just simply want all emails from that table into a single column you can do that like this.

select People.cEmail

from dbo.People

for xml path('')

If however, you need other columns from that table or some other information the article that Luis pointed you to is an excellent start.

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Alan Burstein SSC Guru Points: 61141 More actions · Answer 3

You don't need a loop to do what you were trying to do. This would do the trick

DECLARE @emails varchar(5000)=''

SELECT @emails=@emails+';'+cEmail

FROM dbo.people;

This technique, however, can give you data issues... The prefered method would be to use FOR XML PATH as discussed in the link Louis provided....

SELECT x FROM

(SELECT cEmail + ';'

FROM #people

FOR XML PATH('')) xx(x)

"I cant stress enough the importance of switching from a sequential files mindset to set-based thinking. After you make the switch, you can spend your time tuning and optimizing your queries instead of maintaining lengthy, poor-performing code."

-- Itzik Ben-Gan 2001

Sean Lange SSC Guru Points: 286590 More actions · Answer 4

heh I forgot the semicolon in my post. Alan you don't need to do this with a subselect, just a simple query works.

SELECT cEmail + ';'