Maybe you get emails from time to time saying something like “Hey can you grant so-and-so SELECT permission on” and then they list a few dozen tables.

There’s a couple of issues with this.

Firstly you shouldn’t be getting that as a simple email, it should come in as a formal access request.

Secondly User access should be defined in roles (or group logins if you want to manage access at an Active Directory level) that tie back to departments and seniority. Different roles have different permissions on different objects. This makes the subject of access more manageable and easily auditable. The access request should be “can you add so-and-so to this role” and ideally people should only exist in one role.

Thirdly this would be really annoying and, depending on the length of the table list, take too long to do via the SSMS GUI.

So if you are getting emails like the above try move your organisation along with regards the first two points. But to help you action the email I’ve created the Excel file DbaScripts_GrantSelect which can be downloaded here.

The DbaScripts_GrantSelect file allows you to enter the Login (user name), Database name and Schema name in the first three columns. You can then copy and paste the table names into the fourth column called Table. Drag the first three columns down for as many table name entries there are. Then drag the SQL Command formula column down for as many table name entries there are and this will create the commands to grant SELECTs on the tables for the user specified.

If you can’t download the file above you can recreate it.

In an empty Excel sheet write the following into the cells as directed.

A1: Login
B1: Database
C1: Schema
D1: Table
E1: SQL Command

In E2 paste the following formula:

=”GRANT SELECT ON [“&B2&”].[“&C2&”].[“&D2&”] TO [“&A2&”];”