A reader wrote in to ask why they could not get their MS Access summary query working. They wanted a report like this.

Group       Budget      Actual
01          $ 34,000    $ 33,756
02          $ 75,000    $ 69,955
03          $ 12,000    $ 13,750
04          $ 25,000    $ 21,223

But their report looked like this.

Group       Budget      Actual
010250      $ 20,000    $ 20,000
010500      $ 14,000    $ 13,756
020722      $ 20,000    $ 13,455
020999      $ 55,000    $ 56,500
etc.

The thing is, that “Group” column is based on a BudgetCode field that has values like this.

010250
010500
020722
020999
etc.

The base query that gets us partway there is easily done using the Query Builder. (the steps that I followed below are based on Microsoft Access 2000, but easily translated to other versions)

• go to the query tab in Access
• click on “New”
• choose Design View and click OK
• select the table (or possibly another query) and click Add
• click Close
• drag the BudgetCode, BudgetAmount, and ActualAmount fields to the query grid
• click on the sum symbol (funny looking “E” in the toolbar)
• under the BudgetAmount and ActualAmount fields in the query grid, click on the Total cell
• from the drop down list choose Sum
• run the query (use the red exclamation mark in toolbar)

That gives us the report style that our reader initially created. With one minor change we will get the final result that we want, summarizing based on just the first 2 characters of the BudgetCode field.

• go back to design view (a little blue triangle symbol at the far left of the toolbar, or under the “View” menu)
• change the BudgetCode field name to this (without quotes) – “left([BudgetCode],2)”
• rerun the query

As a final note, let’s see what the actual “code” looks like. Under the View menu, choose the “SQL View”.

SELECT Left([BudgetCode],2) AS Expr1,
Sum(data.BudgetAmount) AS SumOfBudgetAmount,
Sum(data.ActualAmount) AS SumOfActualAmount
FROM data
GROUP BY Left([BudgetCode],2);

Cool!

As usual, leave comments about your success or questions. Thanks.