How to Drop a Table in Snowflake (and Undrop It)

IF EXISTS makes the statement a no-op rather than an error when the table is already gone, which matters in scripts. The table disappears from SHOW TABLES immediately, but it is not really deleted: it moves into Time Travel and keeps consuming storage you are billed for until the retention period expires.

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS orders_backup;

Restore a dropped table

UNDROP restores the most recently dropped table of that name, with its data, instantly. It works only within DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS, which defaults to 1 on standard accounts and can go up to 90 on Enterprise. If a new table with the same name has since been created, rename or drop that one first, otherwise UNDROP fails on the name collision.

UNDROP TABLE orders_backup;