title: ORA-01418 specified index does not exist
body: <p>I'm trying to increase the column length of a particular column in a table using the SQL below:</p>
  <pre><code>ALTER TABLE ALTERNATIVETRADEID#B MODIFY ALTERNATIVEID VARCHAR2(52);
  </code></pre>
  <p>This results in the following error:</p>
  <pre><code>ORA-14061; data type or length of an index partitioning column may not be changed.
  
  *Cause: User issued ALTER TABLE statement attempting to modify data type and/or length of a column used to partition some index defined on the table named in ALTER TABLE statement, which is illegal
  *Action: Avoid modifying data type and/or length of index partitioning column(s)
  </code></pre>
  <p>I understand why the error is thrown and the recommended action to avoid, however as usual it's out of my hands so i'm attempting the following work around found <a href="https://developpaper.com/ora-14061-cannot-change-data-type-or-length-of-index-partition-column/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>:</p>
  <pre><code>ALTER TABLE ALTERNATIVETRADE#B DROP CONSTRAINT PK_ALTERNATIVETRADEID#B; --1
  
  DROP INDEX PK_ALTERNATIVETRADEID#B; --2
  
  ALTER TABLE ALTERNATIVETRADEID#B MODIFY (ALTERNATIVEID VARCHAR2(52)); --3
  
  ALTER TABLE ALTERNATIVETRADEID#B ADD CONSTRAINT PK_ALTERNATIVETRADEID#B PRIMARY KEY (&quot;DEALID&quot;, &quot;TRADEID&quot;, &quot;ALTERNATIVEID&quot;, &quot;ALTERNATIVEIDTYPE&quot;) USING INDEX TABLESPACE &quot;TS_TRADE_DATA&quot;; --4
  
  ALTER TABLE ALTERNATIVETRADEID#B ENABLE CONSTRAINT PK_ALTERNATIVETRADEID#B; --5
  </code></pre>
  <p>My issue arises from statement --2, resulting in the following error:</p>
  <pre><code>DROP INDEX &quot;PK_ALTERNATIVETRADEID#B&quot;
  ORA-01418: specified index does not exist
  *Cause
  *Action
  </code></pre>
  <p>The index is definitely named correctly in the SQL statement, however i'm assuming that it no longer exists because it was removed when the constraint was removed. Is that correct?</p>
  <p>If so, how can I then achieve my original goal as executing statement --3 after dropping the constraint still results in the ORA-14061 error.</p>
  <p>I'm using Oracle SQL Developer 17.</p>
  <p>Thanks in advance and apologies for essentially asking two questions.</p>