Hi SSCrazy

thanks for that

this now leaves me in the resultset with

(No column name)

,endeffectivedate

,starteffectivedate

from newtable

select softwaremanufacturer,productname,productversion

how do i finnaly concatenate this to say

select softwaremanufacturer,productname,productversion,endeffectivedate

,starteffectivedate

from newtable

thank you

yes i was talking about columns,

select softwaremanufacturer,productname and productversion are columns and not rows as there are more columns I am looking to select.

select * from newtable does not specify...

so it shows the softwaremanufacturer,productname,productversion then any other columns there may be in that particular order

I have tried

select softwaremanufacturer,productname,productversion, * from newtable

but it duplicates the softwaremanufacturer,productname,productversion because of using the...

thankyou that works, not sure how to close this post though or mark it as solved

Hi again Sean

everything works fine its just the drop column part it does not seem to like

--Now we drop the original column

alter table dbo.newtable

drop column @column1

regards

Alan

Hi Sean

that works until i try and put it into a procedure and I get the error

Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Procedure updatethecolumnsSMPV, Line 22

Incorrect syntax near '@column1'.

USE [TestData]

GO

/******...

Hi Sean

The reason they change frequentl is that they are imported from a spreadsheet and the user selects the column name from a drop down box which matches the software...

because the user has a dropdown box to either select it as the software manufacturer, product name or product version then I pass the name of the column across to...

Hi Chris

I agree that what you say that it would work

with the

if RTRIM(@columnname1) = 'softwaremanufacturer' and RTRIM(@columnname2) = 'productname'

begin

...

is there a way around this the as the variables

@columnname1 and @columnname2 could be named anything when they are passed in as this is selected from a dynamically imported spreadsheet

I have managed a workaround, it is a bit longwinded but it seems to work as I have covered every scenario I think.

USE [TestData]

GO

/****** Object: StoredProcedure [dbo].[droptable] ...

oh I see

the reason I am wanting to do this is that the user inports spreadsheets into the DB on a regular basis and if these columns exist then I...

hi there thanks for your reply and yes it is the testbed, also it is still creating the file which happens very quick, but why it hangs i am not...

ok i changed bcp to sqlcmd as follows but it does not work

Any ideas

USE [TestData]

GO

/****** Object: StoredProcedure [dbo].[exporttocsv] Script Date: 06/27/2013 12:23:04 ******/

SET ANSI_NULLS ON

GO

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER...

ok i have done that as follows

USE [TestData]

GO

/****** Object: StoredProcedure [dbo].[exporttocsv] Script Date: 06/27/2013 08:06:19 ******/

SET ANSI_NULLS ON

GO

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON

GO

ALTER procedure [dbo].[exporttocsv]

as

BEGIN

DECLARE @sql varchar(8000)

SELECT @sql...