question Re: Change input and output format of existing hive table in Support Questions

Change input and output format of existing hive table

snm1523 — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:08:10 GMT

Hi,

How do we change the InputFormat and OutputFormat of an existing Hive table?

I tried below, but got an error:

alter table <table name> SET InputFormat "org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.parquet.MapredParquetInputFormat";

Error:

Cannot recognize input near 'SET' 'InputFormat' 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.parquet.MapredParquetInputFormat'

Kindly suggest

Re: Change input and output format of existing hive table

smruti — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 12:36:24 GMT

@snm1523 It should be SET FILEFORMAT INPUTFORMAT... Please try it as follows.

ALTER TABLE alter_file_format_test SET FILEFORMAT INPUTFORMAT 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.parquet.MapredParquetInputFormat' OUTPUTFORMAT 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.parquet.MapredParquetOutputFormat' SERDE 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.parquet.serde.ParquetHiveSerDe';

Re: Change input and output format of existing hive table

snm1523 — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 12:53:48 GMT

@smruti - thank you for the response