Subtracting records

I may be suffering from brain freeze up here in Canada but I am sure that I did this before and I just cannot remember "how".

I am using ACCESS 2003. I have a table with 5000 records.

When I do a find "duplicates" query, I find out that 1200 are duplicates.

So, I now have two tables: the original table with 5000 records including duplicates and a second table with 1200 duplicates (600 x 2).

What I want to do is subtract just the duplicate records (in other words, I want to subtract 600 records that represent the duplicates from the original database.

Now, just in case you are thinking --- why not just use a select query asking for unique values? Well, there is one field that must be included in the revised table that has all unique values.

Record 1 of duplicate match:

Field 1: ABC
Field 2: HIJ
Field 3: 1

Record 2 of duplicate match:

Field 1: ABC
Field 2: HIJ
Field 3: 2

So, a select query based on unique values would not filter out these two records even though I would want to get rid of one of the records because it is a duplicate (based on the fact that Field 1 and Field 2 are the same).

I don't know if I've explained this well enough (it is the Friday before our long weekend for Thanksgiving in Canada so my mind is a bit clouded looking forward to Monday).

Any help would be immensely appreciated.

Thanks, KC

Well, the brain freeze seems to be moving off . . . solved the problem with the help of Knowledge Base at Microsoft.com.

In case anyone else needs a reference:
Old UBB Archived Link: [URL=http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010345581933.aspx]MS KB Article[/URL]


I would still like to hear any strategies that anyone might have to do this in an easier fashion . . .thanks, kc