How do I exclude auto generated columns from SQL Server Generate Script Data Only?

Question

SQL Server Generate Script does a great job of creating a script for the data in the tables using the Data Only option for 'Types of data to script' in the advanced option. However the script generated also includes all the identifiers such as rowid() and integer ids. Understandably this is for referential integrity, but is there a way to exclude such columns?

Answer 1

Not in SSMS itself.

You can use a 3rd party tool such as the free SSMS Tools pack which has a "generate script from grid results" option. So you can generate INSERTs for SELECT col1, col3, col6 FROM MyTable (skipping some columns).

May be useful...

Answer 2

There doesn't seem to be a way to do this in SQL Server, but a quick workaround is to create an initial script and then use that to create a temporary table. Then you can delete the columns you don't want and use the temporary table to generate a SQL statement for the remaining columns.

Let's say you want to copy an Events table, but you don't want to include id:

• Go to tasks > Generate Script and generate a SQL Server script from Events. In "Advanced" options, make sure that you are copying both data and schema. Also make sure you are not scripting primary keys or foreign keys (you will still see the columns in your SQL script, but this will make it easier to quickly delete them from the temporary table).
• Open the generated SQL script in a text editor and use find and replace to change the name of the table, i.e. from Events to EventsTemporary
• Use this script in SQL Server to create and seed the EventsTemporary table. Delete the columns you don't want to copy from this table, such as id.
• Generate a second script from the EventsTemporary table, but this time just copy "data" without schema. Open this new SQL script in a text editor and change the name of the table back to Events
• Use the second script in SQL Server to import the data into your actual Events table.