All the options described below are available in the SQL Prompt options dialog. You can access it by selecting Options... from the SQL Prompt menu in SQL Server Management Studio, or by right-clicking on the SQL Prompt tray icon and selecting Options....

Completion keys

By default, SQL Prompt will only insert a suggestion when you press Enter. You can choose to make SQL Prompt respond to other keys by selecting Completion Keys from the Pop-up Behavior tab. Tick the boxes next to the keys you want to trigger a completion.

Showing the candidate list

By default, SQL Prompt will automatically show the candidate list after keywords it recognizes. You can change this by selecting Triggering from the Pop-up Behavior tab. If you have upgraded from a previous version of SQL Prompt, you are strongly advised to click Restore Defaults on this screen. This will add all the new keywords SQL Prompt now recognizes. If you do not want the candidate list to appear automatically, select the Manual radio button and it will only display when you press Ctrl+Space.

Brackets around names

If you don't want SQL Prompt to insert square brackets around the names of your database objects, you can turn this off. On the Inserted Candidates tab select Formatting, and clear the Surround identifiers with brackets [] check box.

Insert aliases automatically

SQL Prompt has full alias support but, by default, does not automatically create aliases for you. On the Auto Insert tab, select Aliases and then check the Enable alias assignment check box. SQL Prompt will now insert a sensibly named alias whenever you complete the name of a table or view as part of a SELECT statement.

Performance Tweaks

There is a guide available on how to configure SQL Prompt to get the best performance with your particular database configuration. SQL Prompt Optimization tips.