If you have a table and you want to rename a column without using the designer, how can you do that?

First create this table

CREATE TABLE TestColumnChange(id int) 
INSERT TestColumnChange VALUES(1) 
SELECT * FROM TestColumnChange 

As you can see the select statement returns id as the column name. you can use ALTER table ALTER Column to change the dataype of a column but not the name.

Here is what we will do, execute the statement below

EXEC sp_rename 'TestColumnChange.[id]', 'value', 'COLUMN' 

Now do the select, you will see that the column name has changed

SELECT * FROM TestColumnChange 

That is it, very simple