Filtering tables in SQL Server Management Studio

You can filter your list of tables in SQL Server Management Studio by doing the following (below).

This is especially useful if you have lots of related tables and your only interested in a particular set of them e.g. every table with "user" in the table name.

1. Right click on the tables folder
2. Choose Filter > Filter settings
3. This brings up a dialog window allowing you to choose your search criteria (only simple criteria can be user e.g. name, owner, so you cannot use OR/AND etc).
4. After clicking enter your tables are filtered (in the example by all table names with the word "user" in them).
5. Happy developer

This example is in Sql Server Management Studio 2008 R2 (but it should work in 2005 and perhaps lower).

Shortcut Key for Table Details in Sql Server Management Studio

If you select a table name in the query window of Sql Server Management Studio
and press ALT + F1 it will display the details of that table.

In the background shortcut key will execute sp_help on your behalf, so in this example it executes: sp_help users, which is much quicker than typing it.

I'm running Sql Server Management Studio 2008 R2 (but i'm pretty sure it'll work with earlier versions)