Can I change a table from internal to external in hive?

Question

I created a table in hive as a managed table, but it was supposed to be external, is it possible to change the table type of the table without losing the data?

Answer 1

You can copy your data files from the Hive data location to the location you planned to store your external table, drop the table and re-create it as external.

Answer 2

ALTER TABLE <table> SET TBLPROPERTIES('EXTERNAL'='TRUE')

Note: EXTERNAL and TRUE need to caps or it will not work