diff --git a/docs/sql-programming-guide.md b/docs/sql-programming-guide.md
index 282ea75e1e785399ae00d72636efbea65ae7d756..cde5830c733e0dbbfbb2b547097cb0ca685219e9 100644
--- a/docs/sql-programming-guide.md
+++ b/docs/sql-programming-guide.md
@@ -1785,6 +1785,13 @@ that these options will be deprecated in future release as more optimizations ar
       Configures the number of partitions to use when shuffling data for joins or aggregations.
     </td>
   </tr>
+   <tr>
+    <td><code>spark.sql.planner.externalSort</code></td>
+    <td>false</td>
+    <td>
+      When true, performs sorts spilling to disk as needed otherwise sort each partition in memory.
+    </td>
+  </tr>
 </table>
 
 # Distributed SQL Engine