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From time to time, you will find that you will need to remove a table from a database. The reasons may be because the data is no longer needed or because you are recreating or restructuring data from scratch. Whatever the reason, there are a few caveats to consider when removing a table from Access 2007.
First, once you delete a table, the table and all the data within it are gone for good. There is no undoing the deletion of an Access 2007 table so you had better be sure that you will never need that table and data again. Second, you may have relationships associated with the table you are about to delete. Once gone, those relationships are forever severed. You may find it less risky to create a new table, establish new relationships, and test the database before deleting a table or any data.
However, failure to delete unused tables and data can lead to an unnecessarily bloated database. For desktop applications, this may result in slower query times and more disk space used to hold the unneeded but present data in an Access 2007 database. For web applications, this can significantly slow down server-database response times and lead to a higher “bounce rate” on an e-commerce site. From a marketing perspective, this can spell disaster. Keep only the data you need in your database for maximum efficiency, nothing more and nothing less. Just be sure that you keep backups of deleted data in case you need it again or in case your new table doesn’t function the way you expected it would.
To remove a table from Access 2007, look at the panel on the left side of your database. In that panel, you will see an arrow. Click that arrow and choose the table you want to delete (see Figure 3). Right click on that table in the panel and click on DELETE. Access 2007 will post a warning window asking if you really want to delete that table. Click on YES and the table and all of the data within the table are gone for good.
