Yes Remou I wasn't being clear there...
pwise your suggestion worked, thank you, that would have taken me forever to figure out. Here's what it ended up being:
Private Sub cmdPurgeMainTable1_InMainDB_Click()
Dim rst As ADODB.Recordset
Dim con As ADODB.Connection
Set con = CurrentProject.Connection
del = "delete * from tblMainTable1 in 'C:\Main.mdb'"
con.Execute del
End Sub