No, Not That
Video Summary
In this video, I wanted to share a simple but often overlooked tip in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) that can greatly enhance your presentations or detailed explanations of queries. Many people already know about features like setting present mode, adjusting font sizes, and using tools like Zoom for highlighting and drawing. However, there’s one feature that I believe isn’t utilized as much as it should be: the ability to type and edit text directly in the Messages tab. By doing this, you can make your output more readable and easier to understand, especially when dealing with large numbers or complex queries. For instance, you can add commas to separate thousands, highlight important lines for emphasis, and even draw attention to specific parts of your query results. This tip might seem small, but it can significantly improve the clarity and effectiveness of your presentations or documentation sessions.
Full Transcript
Hey! Erik Darling here with Erik Darling data as usual. Still to this. Still haven’t given up on that one yet. Maybe I never will. Who knows? I don’t know. So I just wanted to record a quick video today as a gentle reminder about one presentation tip with SQL Server Management Studio that I don’t see people using a lot. Now, there’s all sorts of tips that people will give you. Like if you go up into Quick Launch and you start typing presentation in here, you’ll get this thing to set present mode on, which adjusts some fonts and some colors so that you can present better. If you go into Tools and then Options and then you click on Fonts and Colors, you can change the font size of certain text. So you can make the output grid text bigger or you can make the Messages tab text bigger. And you can always install Zoom it. And you can zoom in and you can circle stuff and you can point at stuff and draw smiley faces or a smiley robot face. I maybe thing. But that’s not the none of those is really what I’m here to talk about. No, but I want to talk about is something a little bit simpler. Now, a lot of people will turn statistics time and IO on and maybe even set no count on before they run a query so that they can get some diagnostic information about the query in the Messages tab.
And I’ve done just that. What I want to remind you about, you nice lovely people out there, is that you can type and edit text in the Messages tab. So if you wanted to, you know, perhaps highlight some of these line items a little bit better, you can, you know, put stuff on new lines and you can do all that and you can type in commas when you want to like show people like how big a number is. So you go one, two, three, and then one, two, three, four. Oops. Two, three, four. There we go. So that’s a real number there. And if you want to stick a comma in here, you can stick a comma in here and you can stick a comma in here and kind of make things a little bit more readable. Because for some reason, Microsoft hates sticking commas or any sort of thing that might help you identify just how big a number is. And that can be frustrating for people, especially people in the back who, you know, might have a hard time seeing until you zoom in with your nicely formatted numbers and show everyone exactly what you’re talking about.
Anyway, that’s just something that I, I personally wanted to talk about on this. Well, let’s just say it’s a day of the week where I probably shouldn’t be in my office recording a video. I should probably be out doing something else, but that’s why it’s going to be short and that’s why I’m going to get going and go do something else with my day that hopefully involves $15 eggs and bottomless somethings.
Anyway, thanks for watching. I hope you learned something. Hope you enjoyed yourself.
Video Summary
In this video, I wanted to share a simple but often overlooked tip in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) that can greatly enhance your presentations or detailed explanations of queries. Many people already know about features like setting present mode, adjusting font sizes, and using tools like Zoom for highlighting and drawing. However, there’s one feature that I believe isn’t utilized as much as it should be: the ability to type and edit text directly in the Messages tab. By doing this, you can make your output more readable and easier to understand, especially when dealing with large numbers or complex queries. For instance, you can add commas to separate thousands, highlight important lines for emphasis, and even draw attention to specific parts of your query results. This tip might seem small, but it can significantly improve the clarity and effectiveness of your presentations or documentation sessions.
Full Transcript
Hey! Erik Darling here with Erik Darling data as usual. Still to this. Still haven’t given up on that one yet. Maybe I never will. Who knows? I don’t know. So I just wanted to record a quick video today as a gentle reminder about one presentation tip with SQL Server Management Studio that I don’t see people using a lot. Now, there’s all sorts of tips that people will give you. Like if you go up into Quick Launch and you start typing presentation in here, you’ll get this thing to set present mode on, which adjusts some fonts and some colors so that you can present better. If you go into Tools and then Options and then you click on Fonts and Colors, you can change the font size of certain text. So you can make the output grid text bigger or you can make the Messages tab text bigger. And you can always install Zoom it. And you can zoom in and you can circle stuff and you can point at stuff and draw smiley faces or a smiley robot face. I maybe thing. But that’s not the none of those is really what I’m here to talk about. No, but I want to talk about is something a little bit simpler. Now, a lot of people will turn statistics time and IO on and maybe even set no count on before they run a query so that they can get some diagnostic information about the query in the Messages tab.
And I’ve done just that. What I want to remind you about, you nice lovely people out there, is that you can type and edit text in the Messages tab. So if you wanted to, you know, perhaps highlight some of these line items a little bit better, you can, you know, put stuff on new lines and you can do all that and you can type in commas when you want to like show people like how big a number is. So you go one, two, three, and then one, two, three, four. Oops. Two, three, four. There we go. So that’s a real number there. And if you want to stick a comma in here, you can stick a comma in here and you can stick a comma in here and kind of make things a little bit more readable. Because for some reason, Microsoft hates sticking commas or any sort of thing that might help you identify just how big a number is. And that can be frustrating for people, especially people in the back who, you know, might have a hard time seeing until you zoom in with your nicely formatted numbers and show everyone exactly what you’re talking about.
Anyway, that’s just something that I, I personally wanted to talk about on this. Well, let’s just say it’s a day of the week where I probably shouldn’t be in my office recording a video. I should probably be out doing something else, but that’s why it’s going to be short and that’s why I’m going to get going and go do something else with my day that hopefully involves $15 eggs and bottomless somethings.
Anyway, thanks for watching. I hope you learned something. Hope you enjoyed yourself.
Going Further
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