June 1 is the release date for SQL Server 2016, so plenty of developers will be downloading and setting up new instances. One pain point is installing a new version of SSMS(SQL Server Management Studio) and getting it configured. I recently upgraded SSMS from 2012 to 2016 RC3 at work so that I could connect to 2014 instances. Here are the steps I went through to customize SSMS after it was installed.

1) Tools=>Options=>Designers=>Table and Database Designers – Uncheck ‘Prevent saving changes that require table re-creation’.
By default, the table designer prevents you from making schema changes to a table that will force the table to be rebuilt.

2) Search and Replace – By default sends results to the ‘Find Results 1’ window – On that window, click the down arrow and select ‘Auto Hide’ to keep the window from displaying next time.
Some people may appreciate this functionality, but this isn’t something I ever use. When searching a script, I want to see the

3) Templates: I use templates as a starting point for several different things, such as creating a new stored procedure or a table. I wrote about templates in an earlier post.
All that’s involved is copying the templates from the old installation to the 2016 directory:
“C:\Users\{User}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SQL Server Management Studio\13.0\Templates\Sql\CS\*.sql”
Where {User} is the Windows user name, and CS is the directory I created for the custom templates. SSMS needs to be closed and re-opened to pick up these changes.

4) Registered servers: The registered servers can be exported to the new edition.
From SSMS 2012 – Right click on your group to export=>Tasks=>Export
Save export file – Select if you want to save user names and passwords with the file.
Saves a regsrvr file.
In new SSMS, right click on Local Server groups=>Tasks=>Import.

5) Toolbar: Select down arrow at end of toolbar then ‘Add or remove buttons’ to select Icons to remove or add to toolbar, to remove anything you won’t use to de-clutter the toolbar.

6) Function Names: I like my function names in lower case. To set up for Intellisense to fill in function names as lower case:
Tools=>Options=>Text Editor=>Transact-SQL=>IntelliSense : ‘Casing for built-in function names’ – Lower Case.

There was one feature I used that wasn’t included in this edition. I frequently export data to a CSV file, so SSMS had a setting to surround any text that contained the delimiter(a comma) with quotes. Hopefully this will be restored in a future update.
1) Tools=>Options=>Query Results=>SQL Server=>Results to grid – ‘Quote strings containing list separators when saving .csv results”