MS SQL Server - delete row where column is empty string (blank)

In this article, we would like to show you how to delete a row where the column is an empty string in MS SQL Server.

Quick solution:

DELETE FROM [table_name] WHERE [column_name] = '';

If your column is NULL then the below query works:

DELETE FROM [table_name] WHERE [column_name] IS NULL;

Practical example

To show how to delete rows with an empty string values, we will use the following table:

Note:

At the end of this article you can find database preparation SQL queries.

Example

In this example, we will delete rows from users table with empty email column.

Query:

DELETE FROM [users] WHERE [email] = '';

Result:

Database preparation

create_tables.sql file:

CREATE TABLE [users] (
	[id] INT IDENTITY(1,1),
	[name] VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
	[surname] VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
	[email] VARCHAR(50),
	PRIMARY KEY ([id])
);

insert_data.sql file:

INSERT INTO [users]
	( [name], [surname], [email])
VALUES
	('John', 'Stewart', 'john@email.com'),
	('Chris', 'Brown', ''),
	('Kate', 'Lewis',''),
	('Ailisa', 'Gomez', 'ailisa@email.com'),
	('Gwendolyn', 'James', ''),
	('Simon', 'Collins', ''),
	('Taylor', 'Martin',''),
	('Andrew', 'Thompson', 'andrew123@email.com');