I have an access table that contains X number of records (X changes on
a weekly basis). I have a recordset that counts the number of records
in the table (X) and stores this number as a variable (FSPRecords).

I have a second vairable that works out what 20% of the total number
of records is (FSPLowest20).

I have field in my table tbl_FSP_2010 called Flag and another called
Total. Using VBA code, I need to order my table by the Total column
and assign the Flag field to "true" for the first 20% of the records
(the number of records stored in the variable FSPLowest20).

Does anyone have any ideas on how this can be done please?

Many thanks

Laura

Laura wrote:
returns the first 20% of your records

SELECT TOP 20 PERCENT <key fields>,[Flag]
FROM tbl_FSP_2010
ORDER BY Total ASC

Save it as First20PercentFSP

Then in VBA (test this in a backup of your database):
-------------------------------------------
set db=currentdb

'first, clear the flag column in all records:
db.execute "update tbl_FSP_2010 set Flag=0"

'Then update the flag column using the saved query as the source:
db.execute "update First20PercentFSP set Flag = -1"
-------------------------------------------

PS. I'm a little concerned with the name of your table, since it implies
that you will be creating a new table for each year. This is not
recommended. What you should have is a single table called tbl_FSP with an
additional column called FSP_Year to identify the year of the records. The
maxim is: Data should be stored as data, not metadata.