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How to Insert Values into an Identity Column in SQL Server

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 Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Wednesday, August 08, 2007 9:09:12 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00) (  |  )

Inserting a value into an identity column (primary key) is something I need to do often but usually forget how to do.  It's actually pretty easy so I made myself some notes on this topic.

If you try and run this in QA in SQL Server, you'll receive the error below because ID is the PK for tableA 

INSERT tableA(ID, TheValue)
VALUES (1, 'First Row')
GO

Msg 544, Level 16, State 1, Line 3
Cannot insert explicit value for identity column in table 'tableA' when IDENTITY_INSERT is set to OFF.

The trick is to enable IDENTITY_INSERT for the table like this

SET IDENTITY_INSERT tableA ON

INSERT tableA(ID, TheValue)
VALUES (3, 'First Row')

SET IDENTITY_INSERT tableA OFF