Special Edition Using Access 97, Second Edition

Deleting Records from a Table with an Action Query

Tip

It's a good practice to run a select query to display the records that you are about to delete and then convert the select query to a deleted query.

Often, you might have to delete records from a table. For example, you might want to delete records for canceled orders, or records for customers that have made no purchases for several years. Deleting records from a table with a delete query is the reverse of the append process. You create a select query with all fields (using the * choice from the field list) and then add the individual fields to be used to specify the criteria for deleting specific records. If you don't specify any criteria, Access deletes all the table's records when you ...