I am trying to normalize a large, hard to manage table into several smaller ones. For example the larger table contains, among other fields, a custodian field. I want to replace this with a custodian id field and link the custodian table to the large table through the custodian id. My problem is, using the select distinct SQL statement seems to work fine but I can't figure out how to insert the distinct values into an existing table. I keep overwriting the table.

Now
Large table:
custodian: fred
mike
john

Proposed
Large table:
custodian id 1
2
3

Custodian table:
Custodian id 1 Custodian fred
2 mike
3 john

thanks for any help