SQL Keywords: DELETE

The DELETE keyword is used to delete one or more records from a table.

To delete all records from a table, use the following formula:

DELETE FROM TableName

When this statement is executed, all records from the TableName table would be deleted. Here is an example:

DELETE FROM Customers

You can do the same with the following:

DELETE *
FROM TableName

Here is an example:

Private Sub cmdDeleteRecords_Click()
    DoCmd.RunSQL "DELETE * FROM Videos;"
End Sub

If you execute this type of statement, all records from the table would be deleted. We saw above that the user can specify what particular record to delete instead of all records. You also can specify what record to remove from a table. To do this, use the following formula of the DELETE operator:

DELETE *
FROM TableName
WHERE Condition

This time, the Condition factor allows you to set the condition that would be applied to locate the record. Here is an example of specifying a condition to delete a record:

Private Sub cmdDeleteRecords_Click()
    DoCmd.RunSQL "DELETE * " & _
                 "FROM Videos " & _
                 "Director = 'Adrian Lynn';"
End Sub