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I inherited a table with about 40 columns and about 1400 rows. Unfortunately, the original designers didn't include an identifiable PK in the table so I'm assuming they used a natural key with a combination of 4 or 5 columns. However what those columns are are unknown.

Is there any easy way to determine this or do I need to sit down and start trying to reduce it via select statements?

Jabsy
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  • I think Access has a feature to analyze a table (that has a lot of rows) and identifying possible duplications and suggesting a normalization of the table. This feature might be helpful in your situation. – ypercubeᵀᴹ Feb 14 '12 at 21:59

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I ended up taking the approach of excel and filters and narrowing down items until I was left with one entry. After that I then took the approach of making sure those fields would always bring back a unique row.

To do that I went back to the DB and counted the distinct rows when just selecting those fields.

It took a bit of guess and check but it ended out working well.

Jabsy
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