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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-24T12:26:02+00:00

Using mysql, how do I delete all rows from a table, but keep, say,

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Using mysql, how do I delete all rows from a table, but keep, say, 200 records?

The obvious approach is to count them, do some arithmetic, and delete the right number. But does mysql has some builtin function that does it in one delete query?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can delete using a condition:

    delete from YourTable
where YourSequentialID > 200

    However your sequential could have gaps, so you would not have exactly 200 rows. So what you can do is working on your condition.

    Find the records you want to keep (say the first 200) and delete everything else:

    delete from YourTable 
where id not in
(
select ID 
from YourTable
LIMIT 200
)

    I know, that can be slow. But that’s not a production query, it’s just a clean up query. You can live with having to run it only once.

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