If there is another field in the table that would determine which of the duplicate records you want to keep (such as the oldest record) you could key off that to remove the duplicates.

/* Set up the test table */

Declare @phonenum table (phone varchar(10), pdate int)

insert

into @phonenum (phone,pdate)

select 1,1 union all

select 2,2 union all

select 3,3 union all

select 3,2 union all

select 4,2 union all

select 5,1 union all

select 5,7 union all

select 5,3 union all

select 5,1 union all

select 6,1

select 'original table', phone, pdate

from @phonenum

order by phone, pdate

/* copy the non-dups from the original table based on oldest date */

select phone,pdate

into #temptab

from

(select p.phone,p.pdate

from @phonenum p

join @phonenum p2

on p.phone = p2.phone

GROUP BY p.phone,p.pdate having p.pdate = min(p2.pdate)) t

select 'temporary table - non-dups with oldest date', phone, pdate from #temptab

order by phone

drop table #temptab

If you need another tiebreaker when the dates are also the same, add that to the selection criteria. If it doesn't matter if the dates are the same, this will just put one of the records out there.

It is always good to review the data before running any updates or deletes so you can see if there are any special cases to take into account.

Toni