10 Minute Guide to Microsoft Access 2002

You will probably find that certain records in the table become outdated or no longer pertinent to the database (such as an employee who has left your company but still has a record in the Employee table) You can delete a record or several records at a time.

To delete a record or records, follow these steps:

1. To select the record that you want to delete, click the record selector button (the small gray box to the left of the record, as shown in Figure 8.5). If you want to select multiple records, click and drag the record selector buttons of the contiguous records.

   Figure 8.5. Select the record or records you want to delete.

   

2. To delete the record or records, perform any of the following:

   • Click the Delete Record button on the toolbar.

   • Press the Delete key on the keyboard.

   • Select the Edit , Delete Record .

3. A dialog box appears, letting you know that you are deleting a record and will not be able to undo this action. To delete the record or records, click Yes.

Caution

Deleting Records Affects the AutoNumber Sequence When you delete records in the table that were assigned an identification number using the AutoNumber data type, that number (or numbers) will be lost from the sequence. For example, if you delete a customer with the AutoNumber customer ID of 3, the number 3 is removed from the sequence. When listing your customers, the customer numbers would then appear as 1, 2, 4, 5, and so on.

In this lesson, you learned how to edit data in a field, how to insert and delete fields, and how to copy and move data from place to place. You also learned how to insert and delete records in the table. In the next lesson, you learn how to format your table.