Tired of typing out the same queries day after day? Well query shortcuts in SSMS are for you!
Following on from my last post Changing connection colours in SSMS I thought I’d write another quick about this cool but also often unused feature in SSMS.
These shortcuts allow you to run pre-determined queries by assigning a hot key within SSMS. To do this in SSMS go to Tools > Options > Environment > Keyboard
From there you can set the query to the hot key you want to use. Nice and easy!
In nearly all of the instances of SQL Server that I look after, I’ve installed Adam Machanic’s excellent sp_whoisactive. By adding the above shortcut into SSMS I can run it quickly and easily in any instance that I’ve connected to. It’s really handy and I’d definitely recommend you install it and set a query shortcut up for it.
Thanks for reading!
DBA From The Cold 
This is a great feature of query shortcuts. I inserted the text ‘Select * from ‘ in the Shortcut “Cntrl + 3” text box so that I can highlight a table name in any query window, press the combination Cntr + 3 to retrieve a recordset of the highlighted table.