There is already an object named 'tbltable1

Question

I am trying to insert data from one table to another with same structure,

select * into tbltable1 from tbltable1_Link

I am getting the following error message:

There is already an object named 'tbltable1' in the database.

Answer 1

The SELECT INTO statement creates a new table of the name you provide and populates it with the results of the SELECT statement.

I think you should be using INSERT INTO since the table already exists. If your purpose is in fact to populate a temporary table, then you should provide a table name that does not already exist in the database.

See MSDN for more information on this.

Answer 2

If you are confident that tbltable1 is not required, you can drop the table first.

You may also want to consider using temporary tables...

Select * into ##MyTemporaryTable FROM tblTable1_Link 

You can then use the temporary table in this session. (Ending the session should drop the temporary table automatically, if I remember correctly. It's been a while since I've worked with SQL Server).