Auto-increment primary key in SQL tables

Using Sql Express Management Studio 2008 GUI (not with coding), how can I make a primary key auto-incremented?

Let me explain: there is a table which has a column named "id" and the items of this column are set to be primary keys. I want to make this column auto-incremented, but how?

Cheers

Solution 1:

1. Presumably you are in the design of the table. If not: right click the table name - "Design".
2. Click the required column.
3. In "Column properties" (at the bottom), scroll to the "Identity Specification" section, expand it, then toggle "(Is Identity)" to "Yes".

Solution 2:

Although the following is not way to do it in GUI but you can get autoincrementing simply using the IDENTITY datatype(start, increment):

CREATE TABLE "dbo"."TableName"
(
   id int IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
   name varchar(20),
);

the insert statement should list all columns except the id column (it will be filled with autoincremented value):

INSERT INTO "dbo"."TableName" (name) VALUES ('alpha');
INSERT INTO "dbo"."TableName" (name) VALUES ('beta');

and the result of

SELECT id, name FROM "dbo"."TableName";

will be

id    name
--------------------------
1     alpha
2     beta