Defining a Primary Key

As you learned in Chapter 3, it is important to define a primary key to uniquely identify each row in a table. Doing so allows you to define relationships with other tables and reduces redundant data. Also, you cannot update a table that does not have a primary key. Defining a primary key for a table in an Access project is very similar to defining a primary key in an Access desktop database (.mdb).

Remember, you didn’t define a primary key for the Companies table. Open that table again in Design view. To define a primary key, select the column that you want to make into a primary key—in this case, the CompanyID column. Then click the Primary Key button on the Table Design toolbar or choose the Primary Key command from the ...

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