Font colour (color) used in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)

Question

It is possible to change the default font colour (color) used in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) in the messages pane output, via a SQL print command?

IF @@TRANCOUNT>0 BEGIN
PRINT 'The database update succeeded'
COMMIT TRANSACTION
END
ELSE PRINT 'The database update failed'
GO

I.e

Solution

It's a bit of an old post, but if you still want to be able to display your text in red: use the built in RAISERROR function. You can set the severity of the error and that will determine if it outputs your text in black or red. For example:

raiserror('Your error message', 10, 0)

Will display the error with just the black font color

raiserror('Your error message', 11, 0)

Will display the error with a red font color

Message severity of 10 or lower will use black font color, 11 or higher will use red font color.

For completion: message severity of 20 or higher will stop executing the rest of the script, and if you use a message severity of 19 or higher you have to call the raiserror function with the log option, like so:

 raiserror('Your error message', 20, 0) with log