SQL INSERT INTO Statement – SQL Tutorial

The SQL INSERT INTO statement is used to insert one or multiple records to a database table.

INSERT INTO TableName (ColumnName1, ColumnName2, ColumnName3, ...)
VALUES (Value1, Value2, Value3, ...)

The column names can be ignored, in this case, the values will be inserted by the order of the columns when the table was created.

INSERT INTO TableName 
VALUES (Value1, Value2, Value3, ...)

We can insert records from other tables:

INSERT INTO Table1 (ColumnName1, ColumnName2, ColumnName3)
SELECT ColumnName1, ColumnName2, ColumnName3
FROM Table2
WHERE condition

Variations of inserting records from other tables:

INSERT INTO Table1 
SELECT ColumnName1, ColumnName2, ColumnName3
FROM　Ｔable2
WHERE condition

INSERT INTO Table1 
SELECT *
FROM　Ｔable2
WHERE condition

We start from an empty table Employees:

EmployeeId	FirstName	LastName	Department	Salary

We use the following statement to insert a new record into the table Employees:

INSERT INTO Employees (EmployeeId, FirstName, LastName, Department, Salary)
VALUES (203, 'Mazojys', 'Fxoj', 'Finance', 78000)

The table Employees will now look like:

EmployeeId	FirstName	LastName	Department	Salary
203	Mazojys	Fxoj	Finance	78000

We may use shorthand to insert another new record:

INSERT INTO Employees
VALUES (204, 'Jozzh', 'Lnanyo', 'Finance', 45800)

The table Employees will now look like:

EmployeeId	FirstName	LastName	Department	Salary
203	Mazojys	Fxoj	Finance	78000
204	Jozzh	Lnanyo	Finance	45800

If we don’t have complete information of all the columns to insert a new record:

INSERT INTO Employees
VALUES (205, 'Syllauu', 'Dfaafk')

The table Employees will now look like:

EmployeeId	FirstName	LastName	Department	Salary
203	Mazojys	Fxoj	Finance	78000
204	Jozzh	Lnanyo	Finance	45800
205	Syllauu	Dfaafk

To restore data from a backup table:

INSERT INTO Employees
SELECT *
FROM EmployeesBak
WHERE EmployeeId > 500