Dup. Records... 1

[Junior1544]

I have a rather large table. I want to make a field indexed and disable duplicate records with it. there are already dup's in there so it wont let me make it an index without dup's allowed... what's the easiest way to get rid of those dup's??

--Junior Junior1544@yahoo.com
Life is change. To deny change is to deny life.

 

[WildHare]

It depends on which records you want to keep - there are a couple of ways to skin this cat. (Both of which can leave you bloody and hacking up furballs..

If, to paraphrase Bill Murray, "It just doesn't matter!" which records you save or get rid of, I'd create a duplicate design of the table, with the keying enabled, and do an append query to shoot records from the Bad guy to the GOOD guy. Duplicates will get rejected.

You may be able to sort the BAD guy in such a way the the record you want to save WILL go in, and the dupes you don't want will be rejected. It's hard to say without knowing how your dupes came to be.

Remember, you're unique - just like everyone else
You're invited to visit another free Access forum:

http://www.forumco.com/jmhare

or my site,

http://www.jmhare.com

 

[larryww]

Run a "duplicate query" to size up and address the duplicity.

 

[Craig0201]

Simplest way.....

Use the DISTINCT predicate to get unique records. Then run a make table query. Then delete the old table. Then rename the new table to the old name.

Job's a good un.....

Craig

 

[Junior1544]

larryww,

i made a query like you said, and it was only like 5 records, so i deleted one of each by hand... and it let me index the field on the table without dups... thanks...

--Junior Junior1544@yahoo.com
Life is change. To deny change is to deny life.

 

[larryww]

Good deal. I bow to the technically superior answers by the others here (really - all were well done, and they invested more time than I did on this question). Yet sometimes K.I.S.S. is indeed the way to fly - glad it worked out.