Chapter 9: Modifying Data with Action Queries

Overview

In Chapter 7, “Creating and Working with Simple Queries,” you learned how to insert, update, and delete single rows of data within a datasheet. In Chapter 8, “Building Complex Queries,” you discovered that you can use queries to select the data you want-even from multiple tables. You also learned under what conditions you cannot update a field in a query. Now you can take the concept of queries one step further and use action queries to quickly change, insert, create, or delete sets of data in your database.

The four types of queries you’ll study in this chapter are

• Update query   Allows you to update the fields in one or more rows.

• Make-table query   Allows you to create a new table by selecting rows from one or more existing tables.

• Append query   Allows you to copy rows from one or more tables into another table.

• Delete query   Allows you to remove one or more rows from a table.

Note 

The examples in this chapter are based on the tables and data in HousingDataCopy.accdb and ContactsDataCopy.accdb on the companion CD included with this book. These databases are copies of the data from the Housing Reservations and Conrad Systems Contacts sample applications, respectively, and they contain the sample queries used in this chapter. The query results you see from the sample queries you build in this chapter might not exactly match what you see in this book if you have changed the sample data in the files.