In our continuing coverage of query tips and techniques, we've create a paper focused on the DELETE query in Microsoft Access. It covers the basics of DELETE query SQL Syntax. It's a very powerful feature and a fundamental part of relational databases since you can remove multiple records at one time, and can specify which records to delete by linking to data in another table.

The paper also covers these more advanced topics:

• Query fails: "Could not delete from the specified tables"
• Use DISTINCTROW with Delete Queries for Non-Key Field Joins

Understanding and using Delete Queries improves the performance of your applications and makes them easier to maintain versus doing the same changes manually or in code.