Intellisense in SSMS doesn’t work any more
In my last job Intellisense stopped working in SSMS and I just lived with it for years. When I came to a new office, it worked for a while, and then stopped one day. But it’s so much extra typing, I decided to try to fix it.
Here are the culprits, in order of ease-to-fix, ending with what I had to do :)
- Enable Intellisense (
Query -> Intellisense Enabled) - Turn off SQLCMD mode (
Query -> SQLCMD Mode) - Refresh the Intellisense cache (
Ctrl+Shift+R) - Check settings are alright in
Tools -> Options -> Text Editor -> Transact-SQL -> Intellisense - If you are working with a particularly big script file, increase the Max file size in the settings above
- Install or reinstall the latest Service Pack for SQL Server
Service Packs
It turns out that Intellisense stopped working for me in both instances because I had reinstalled/repaired Visual Studio.
I didn’t have full-blown SQL Server on my last PC, so I don’t know how installing a SQL Server Service Pack would help. Maybe all you really need to patch is SSMS (which has a standalone installer).
Here I am on SQL Server 2008 R2, so the latest service pack is Service Pack 3.
Hope it helps!
Sources: IntelliSense not working but it is enabled, IntelliSense is not working at SQL Server Management Studio