Preventing names from being deleted from table

[gary g]

I have an Access 10 DB that includes 299 names and other associated data relevant to these names. I have a need to drop 249 of these names that are no longer needed in the DB, and just keep the 50 names that would remain in the table.

If I am in the table is there any way to somehow "designate" or select the 50 names I want to keep and then just mass delete the other 249 in one fell swoop? If I can somehow sort the 50 names so they would appear as the first 50 names in the table, then I could simply delete all the names below. But not sure how to make this happen. It would seem to be the simplest solution. Unless I can physically drag and drop each of the 50 names I want to keep to the top of the table, but I don't think this is possible. Is it?

Can anyone help me with this or provide alternatives? Thanks very much.

 

[bob fitz]

Perhaps you could add a new field to the table and enter something in the field if it is one of the 50 to be kept. Then create a Delete query to delete all records where that field is Null