Pipo--

I happened to have the same need to decrease the column sizes from 4000 to 2000 so I tried your suggestion.

What I did is I exported the original tables data using Oracle's export utility and truncate that table. After that, I modified that table to decrease the column sizes. And finally, I tried to import data using Oracle's Import utility. However, the import failed because it tried to recreate the table while the table's definition is already there.

2 questions:
1. When you say 'Export to a temp table' in your previous reply, did you mean using Oracle Export utility OR by doing create table x as select * from y?

2. How can I only import data but not schema when I use Oracle's Import utility?

Thanks!