Question

I have an Access database that I am interacting with using JET with the following structure:

ID  UsersID
1   1
2   2
3   2
4   3
5   1

What I am trying to do is get the latest unique entries. eg:

ID  UsersID
5   1
4   3
3   2

However, I am having trouble mixing grouping and ordering. I have tried

SELECT DISTINCT [UsersID] FROM [Table] ORDER BY [ID] DESC
SELECT [UsersID] FROM [Table] GROUP BY [UsersID] ORDER BY [ID] DESC

But, no luck. Note: if I leave off the ORDER BY [ID] DESC from either query, it works, but obviously the ordering is not as expected.

Answer 1

You can get the largest ID value for each UserID with a simple GROUP BY query.

SELECT UserID, Max(ID) AS MaxOfID
FROM [Table]
GROUP BY UserID;

However I’m not sure I understand the order by and latest 5 requirements. If latest 5 means the 5 largest ID values from the above query, then try it this way …

SELECT TOP 5 UserID, Max(ID) AS MaxOfID
FROM [Table]
GROUP BY UserID
ORDER BY 2 DESC;

“Table” is not the best name for a table. Hope your real world situation uses a different table name. 🙂