SQL Server Management Studio before Description property is added...
to this:
SQL Server Management Studio after Description property is added...
This looks so much more useful!
Follow these instructions for how to do this for SQL Server Management Studio 2012. See the bottom for a link that should work for older versions of SSMS.
USE CAUTION BELOW.
REGEDIT, if not used correctly, can really mess up your computer. I recommend backing up your registry BEFORE trying this. Be sure to back up the WHOLE registry, and not just a portion of it when using File>Export. Notice that at the bottom of the save dialog you can choose the Export Range. You should choose All, so you save the whole registry and not just a portion of it…
Using regedit, modify your registry by going to the following location (for SQL Server Management Studio 2012)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\SQL Server Management Studio\11.0\DataProject
Find and modify the following keys:
• SSVPropViewColumnsSQL70
• SSVPropViewColumnsSQL80
Modify the values of these keys from 1,2,6; to 1,2,6,17; which is effectively just adding 17, which is the value for the table column Description property. You could add probably add other properties as well, as noted below, but I haven’t tried it…
Once you have made the changes, exit Regedit, and restart SQL Server Management Studio. Then you should see the Description column as shown above.
If you wanted to add other columns, you probably could... see the corresponding numbers below...
Property sequence:
1. Column Name
2. Data Type
3. Length
4. Precision
5. Scale
6. Allow Nulls
7. Default Value
8. Identity
9. Identity Seed
10. Identity Increment
11. Row GUID
12. Nullable
13. Condensed Type
14. Not for Replication
15. Formula
16. Collation
17. Description
For older versions of SQL Server Management Studio, see this link…
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10537610/how-do-i-add-the-description-property-to-the-table-designer-view-in-ssms