Don't Delete! Marking Records Inactive. When and When NOT to Hard Delete Data in Microsoft Access

Learn when you should and should NOT delete data from your Microsoft Access databases. We will "soft" delete customer records by marking them "inactive." We'll prevent users from deleting them by setting the Allow Deletions property to NO. I'll show you how to open your customer form to show either Active or Inactive customers. You'll learn how to create a list of only Active customers to select from in a combo box to add a new contact.

Ben from Jamestown PA (a Silver Member) asks: I've got a lot of customers in my database that I know will no longer be buying from me. Some have retired. Some are deceased. I need to keep their records in my table for accounting purposes, but I don't want them cluttering up my reports and combo boxes. How can I remove them without deleting them? Same thing goes with discontinued products.

BONUS FOR CHANNEL MEMBERS:
Silver Members and up get access to an EXTENDED CUT of this video which covers additional examples. That video will show you how to Archive data to a different table after a customer is marked inactive for 30 days. We will create a Contact Archive table, move the information to that table using an append and delete query, and then create a Union query to see how to put it back together again into one set of data, if we need to.

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