get rid of duplicates in populated drop down list

[manared]

I am creating a web app in vb.net 2005. I have a drop down list that is being populated from an Access table. I get it to populate fine, but the problem is that there are multiple listings of the same thing. For example, one drop down list is for Country. USA, United States are listed a lot and Canada too. Because entries can be added into the database table, there can be duplicates of one item. I am wondering if there is any way that I can get rid of these duplications when I populate the drop down list on page load. I want United States and Canada and all other countries to be listed only once even though they are listed in the table many times. Can I do this trhough vb.net code or do I actually have to go into Access and figure out how to create a table and another query to make it populate from that new table? Any help is appreciated, thank you very much.

 

[LookitsPuck]

Do it through the SQL statement. Use the DISTINCT keyword;

So:

SELECT DISTINCT country FROM tbl_whateverthetablenameis

 

[manared]

thank you much! That works!