How to Change the Collation of a SQL Database

Note: While changing the collation, no users should be connected to the database.

In order to successfully change the database collation you will need to set your database to single-user mode, change the collation, and set it back to multi-user mode.

You can copy, paste, and run the following T-SQL script to achieve this:

SELECT name, collation_name FROM sys.databases; 
GO 
ALTER DATABASE [DatabaseName] SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE; 
GO 
ALTER DATABASE [DatabaseName] COLLATE [CollationName]; 
GO 
ALTER DATABASE [DatabaseName] SET MULTI_USER; 
GO 
SELECT name, collation_name FROM sys.databases; 
GO

Replace [DatabaseName] with your actual database name and [CollationName] with your target collation name.

The query result window will display the collation names of your databases before and after the execution of the query.

You can see which collations are available on the server by executing the following statement:

SELECT * FROM fn_helpcollations()

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Article ID: 794, Created: 3/30/2010 at 11:22 AM, Modified: 6/27/2024 at 2:57 PM

How to Change the Collation of a SQL Database

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