I recently needed to connect my SQL Server Management Studio to a database that wasn’t using the default port of 1433. I’d never needed to do this before, and assumed I’d just need to add :port-number after the IP of the server I was connecting too, but I was wrong!

Now, after a fair amount of googling, there appears to be plenty of information on how to set up an instance of SQL server to listen for traffic on another port – but barely anything about how to actually connect SSMS to it! So I decided to write something quick and simple about how to do it!

It’s still just as simple as the IP:Port, but instead of using a colon like most things, it’s a comma.

SQL Login Port Specification