SQL SERVER – DROP TABLE IF EXISTS

SQL Server 2016 introduced a simply way of dropping a table with DROP IF EXISTS.

Instead of having to look and see if whether or not the table exists with one T-SQL statement then running DROP TABLE if it does, and ignored if not, executing DROP TABLE IF EXISTS will do both for you in one line.

This example shows how to use it

-- use database
USE [MyDatabase];
GO

-- attempt to run DROP TABLE only if it exists 
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS [dbo].[MyTable0];
GO