Question

I have the following select statement.
I would like to update the values of ContactAssociate from ‘Bob’ to ‘Jane’. Is it possible to do this?

SELECT TOP (1500) ContactID, ContactNotes, 
  ContactAssociate, ContactAppointment
FROM  
  tb_Contact
WHERE 
 (ContactAssociate = 'Bob') AND 
 (ContactAppointment = 0)

Answer 1

Use:

UPDATE TB_CONTACT
   SET contactassociate = 'Jane'
 WHERE contactassociate = 'Bob'

The query you supplied checked for contactappointment being zero – if you wanted to include that check, the query would be:

UPDATE TB_CONTACT
   SET contactassociate = 'Jane'
 WHERE contactassociate = 'Bob'
   AND contactappointment = 0

The UPDATE statement doesn’t support the TOP keyword, so your update statement would be:

UPDATE TB_CONTACT
   SET contactassociate = 'Jane'
 WHERE contactid IN (SELECT TOP (1500)
                            contactid 
                       FROM TB_CONTACT
                      WHERE contactassociate = 'Bob'
                        AND contactappointment = 0)

…but that will give random contacts – you should specify an ORDER BY clause in the subquery to get consistent results.

Reference:

• UPDATE