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Asked: 2026-05-21T03:06:58+00:00

First time posting, please let me know if this question has already been answered!

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First time posting, please let me know if this question has already been answered! I tried searching around, but couldn’t find anything.

In my stored procedure, I select into a temp table while I do some modifying (Ive dumbed it down to the basic issue). 

SELECT 'a' AS ColA, 'b' AS ColB INTO #tmp

ALTER TABLE #tmp 
    ADD ColC char(5) NULL, 
        ColD char(5) NULL, 
        ColE char(5) NULL

UPDATE #tmp
SET ColC = 'c',
    ColD = 'd',
    ColE = 'e'
FROM #tmp

SELECT * FROM #tmp

In Query Analyzer, If you highlight & run them separately, in order, I get the desired output. 

ColA ColB ColC  ColD  ColE
---- ---- ----- ----- -----
a    b    c     d     e

However, when I run them all together, I get the following error:

(1 row(s) affected)
Msg 207, Level 16, State 1, Line 10
Invalid column name 'colC'.

It looks like the ALTER TABLE statement is being skipped over? I inserted GO statements after each command, and the code worked in query analyzer. However, I cannot figure out how to replicate this in a stored procedure. (Is there a “GO” equivalent for s-procs?)

Any help is greatly appreciated!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    GO is not part of T-SQL, it’s a batch separator supported by a number of SQL Server tools.

    You can generally do the ALTER TABLE with an EXEC, but if your problem requiring an ALTER immediately after a create was how to get dummy columns, then your specific example can simply be done:

    SELECT 'a' AS ColA
    ,'b' AS ColB
    ,CAST(NULL AS char(5)) AS ColC
    ,CAST(NULL AS char(5)) AS ColD
    ,CAST(NULL AS char(5)) AS ColE
INTO #tmp

UPDATE #tmp
SET ColC = 'c',
    ColD = 'd',
    ColE = 'e'
FROM #tmp

SELECT * FROM #tmp
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