Random Selection Of Records

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tom
  • Start date Start date
T

Tom

Say I have a field named Numbers in MyTable and the field contains 500
random numbers between 1 and 1000; no duplicates. How do you write a query
to randomly return 50 records with no duplicates from the 500 records in the
table?

Thanks!

Tom
 
Try this query:
SELECT TOP 50 MyTable.*
FROM MyTable
ORDER BY Rnd(MyTable.MyID), MyTable.MyID;

Before running it you need to execute a Randomize statement so Rnd() does
not use a repeatable sequence.
 
Say I have a field named Numbers in MyTable and the field contains 500
random numbers between 1 and 1000; no duplicates. How do you write a query
to randomly return 50 records with no duplicates from the 500 records in the
table?
Click to expand...

Use the Top Values property:

SELECT TOP 50 *
FROM MyTable
ORDER BY [Numbers];

If you mean no duplicates *between runs of the query* then it's much
more difficult!

John W. Vinson[MVP]
 
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