Question

I have a SQL Server table with fields: id, city, country. I imported this table from Excel file, everything is imported successfully, but id field is not ordered by number. The tool I use imported the rows in some random number.

What kind of Update command I should use from SQL Server Management Studio Express to re-order my ids?

Answer 1

Do you have a primary key and a clustered index on your table? If not, id is a good candidate for a primary key and when you create that the primary key it will be the clustered index.

Assuming this is your table

create table CityCountry(id int, city varchar(10), country varchar(10))

And you add data like this.

insert into CityCountry values (2, '2', '')
insert into CityCountry values (1, '1', '')
insert into CityCountry values (4, '4', '')
insert into CityCountry values (3, '3', '')

The output of select * from CityCountry will be

id          city       country
----------- ---------- ----------
2           2          
1           1          
4           4          
3           3  

A column that is primary key can not accept null values so first you have to do

alter table CityCountry alter column id int not null

Then you can add the primary key

alter table CityCountry add primary key (id)

When you do select * from CityCountry now you get

id          city       country
----------- ---------- ----------
1           1          
2           2          
3           3          
4           4