Cryptic error message baffles me

Databases
1

[FONT=sans-serif][COLOR=#000000]I have a column called author that is set to null for all rows. When I try to drop the column using phpMyAdmin, I get the following error. Any ideas?

Thanks!

[/COLOR][/FONT]#1062 - Duplicate entry ‘shingles-keyword’ for key ‘author’

2

could you do a SHOW CREATE TABLE please?

i don’t understand how dropping a column would create a duplicate entry

have you tried the actual SQL to do that task, instead of the phpmyadmin gui?

ALTER TABLE [I]tablename [/I]DROP COLUMN [I]columnname[/I]
3

Yes, I tried the actual SQL and got the same weird error.

CREATE TABLE searches (
sID int(7) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
searchDate datetime DEFAULT NULL,
uID int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
author mediumint(4) DEFAULT NULL,
type varchar(8) DEFAULT NULL,
keyword varchar(35) DEFAULT NULL,
results smallint(4) DEFAULT NULL,
alerts mediumint(3) DEFAULT ‘0’,
lastAlert datetime DEFAULT NULL,
clicks mediumint(3) DEFAULT ‘0’,
lastClick datetime DEFAULT NULL,
timeStamp timestamp NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
PRIMARY KEY (sID),
UNIQUE KEY author (author,keyword,type),
FULLTEXT KEY keyword (keyword)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=489807 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1

4

drop the unique key before you try to drop the column

5

Thanks Rudy!