Changing the maximum length of a varchar column?

Question

I\'m trying to update the length of a varchar column from 255 characters to 500 without losing the contents. I\'ve dropped and re-created tables before but I\'ve never been expo

Answer 1

ALTER TABLE TABLE_NAME MODIFY COLUMN_NAME VARCHAR(40);

Late to the question - but I am using Oracle SQL Developer and @anonymous's answer was the closest but kept receiving syntax errors until I edited the query to this.

Hope this helps someone