Creates a delete query (delete query: A query (SQL statement) that removes rows matching the criteria that you specify from one or more tables.) that removes records from one or more of the tables listed in the FROM clause that satisfy the WHERE clause.
Syntax
DELETE [table.*]
FROM table
WHERE criteria
The DELETE statement has these parts:
Remarks
DELETE is especially useful when you want to delete many records.
To drop an entire table from the database, you can use the Execute method with a DROP statement. If you delete the table, however, the structure is lost. In contrast, when you use DELETE, only the data is deleted; the table structure and all of the table properties, such as field attributes and indexes, remain intact.
You can use DELETE to remove records from tables that are in a one-to-many relationship (one-to-many relationship: An association between two tables in which the primary key value of each record in the primary table corresponds to the value in the matching field or fields of many records in the related table.) with other tables. Cascading delete (cascading delete: For relationships that enforce referential integrity between tables, the deletion of all related records in the related table or tables when a record in the primary table is deleted.) operations cause the records in tables that are on the many side of the relationship to be deleted when the corresponding record in the one side of the relationship is deleted in the query. For example, in the relationship between the Customers and Orders tables, the Customers table is on the one side and the Orders table is on the many side of the relationship. Deleting a record from Customers results in the corresponding Orders records being deleted if the cascade delete option is specified.
A delete query deletes entire records, not just data in specific fields. If you want to delete values in a specific field, create an update query (update query: An action query (SQL statement) that changes a set of records according to criteria (search conditions) that you specify.) that changes the values to Null (Null: A value you can enter in a field or use in expressions or queries to indicate missing or unknown data. In Visual Basic, the Null keyword indicates a Null value. Some fields, such as primary key fields, can't contain a Null value.).
Important
