Can I change a table from internal to external in hive?

Question

I created a table in hive as a managed table, but it was supposed to be external, is it possible to change the table type of the table without losing the data?

Solution 1

ALTER TABLE <table> SET TBLPROPERTIES('EXTERNAL'='TRUE')

Note: EXTERNAL and TRUE need to caps or it will not work

Solution 2

You can copy your data files from the Hive data location to the location you planned to store your external table, drop the table and re-create it as external.

Comments

[George TeVelde]

figured it out! ALTER TABLE <table> SET TBLPROPERTIES('EXTERNAL'='TRUE');

[soulmachine]

This doesn't move you data to external locations actually, your data are still on HDFS. @Olaf 's solution is right