Change included columns when modifying table

Is there a reason you can't modify included columns when modifying an index on a table?

Well, the primary reason would be due to the fact that adding additional included columns would touch all of the leaf pages in an index, and probably force a fair majority of pages to split multiple times, so in reality most of the time recreating the index from scratch would probably be faster and more efficient once completed. Additionally, a heavy heavy number of disk seeks would be incurred jumping from the position last updated in the index to the table data to read the data to be added and then jump back again.

Basically, I'm sure you'd find that rebuilding the index will almost always give you both faster results, and additionally a more efficient (clean) index when the operation completes.

HTH,

|||I full appreciate that the index needs to be rebuilt, however SSMS manages that for you when you change the columns, clustering, file groups etc. So why can't I change the included columns and SSMS just do a drop_existing.