How to fix SQL Server Management Studio 2014 IntelliSense when intermittent Our remote SQL Server was recently upgraded to 2014. I installed SQL Server Management Studio 2014 on my Windows 10 client computer.

At first, everything seemed to be going great, until I noticed that IntelliSense is intermittent. By "intermittent" I mean that on the same computer, while working on the same script, IntelliSense might appear some times and not appear at other times. Before the upgrade to 2014, this never happened. Now it happens all the time.

Here's a specific example. Suppose I'm typing SELECT DISTINCT * from dbo. The moment I type the period, I expect IntelliSense to list the available tables, as it always does. So by intermittent I mean that sometimes I see the list of tables, and sometimes I don't.  This just a specific example of how the symptom manifests. This is not restrictive to table names. I mean that whenever I expect Intellisense to appear,  it doesn't always appear.

I checked the obvious: Troubleshooting IntelliSense (SQL Server Management Studio) reconfirmed what I already knew and didn't help. I've tried these things.


Closing the remote database connection and reconnecting
Refreshing the IntelliSense cache, both by Ctrl-R and through the menu Edit &gt; IntelliSense &gt; Refresh Local Cache
Making sure all Windows Updates were applied
Checking server connectivity with Ping (average 9 milliseconds)


This is not a duplicate because while other forum posts list the above steps as "answers" they are not answers for me. They do not solve the problem of intermittent IntelliSense.

Is there anything else i can do to fix this problem?
If possible, I'd suggest trying SSMS 2016 instead. It's still supported to use it against SQL Server 2014 (in fact, it's supported to use it against instances as old as SQL Server 2008). With 2016, SSMS is now free, and the installer for it is separate from the installer for the SQL Server server components (Database Engine, Integration Services, etc.). Plus, Microsoft is now releasing updates and improvements for it on a roughly monthly basis.

You can download SSMS 2016 from https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt238290.aspx.

I've personally found IntelliSense to work more reliably with SSMS 2016 than what I was used to with 2014, especially when working over slower or less reliable network connections.