What's the easiest way to create a temp table in SQL Server that can hold the result of a stored procedure?

Many times I need to write something like the following when dealing with SQL Server.

create table #table_name
(
    column1 int,
    column2 varchar(200)
    ...
)

insert into #table_name
execute some_stored_procedure;

But create a table which has the exact syntax as the result of a stored procedure is a tedious task. For example, the result of sp_helppublication has 48 columns! I want to know whether there is any easy way to do this.

Thanks.

If the procedure just returns one result set and the ad hoc distributed queries option is enabled.

SELECT * 
INTO #T 
FROM OPENROWSET('SQLNCLI', 
                'Server=(local)\MSSQL2008;Trusted_Connection=yes;',
                 'SET FMTONLY OFF;EXEC sp_who')

Or you can set up a loopback linked server and use that instead.

EXEC sp_addlinkedserver @server = 'LOCALSERVER',  @srvproduct = '',
                        @provider = 'SQLNCLI', @datasrc = @@servername

SELECT *
INTO  #T
FROM OPENQUERY(LOCALSERVER, 
               'SET FMTONLY OFF;
               EXEC sp_who')

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#12739, answer score: 40