query

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I know. Lousy title. Could not dream anything better up at 5:30 am on a Monday morning!

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.

In MS Access, what is a query?

This series of articles on MS Access Queries will start off from raw basics. Most of my regulars will already know this material, and so please allow for the fact that this is meant for “newbies” to some degree. I promise to get into more challenging topics as we go along.

Simply put, a query is a question asked of the database, specifically of one or more of the tables in the database. A query’s answer returns values from selected fields (columns) and records (rows).

A basic example could be, “Which of our customers are located in Springfield?”

A more complex query (or question) could be, “Which of our customers in Springfield have not ordered any products in the past 6 months?”

The above examples are of just one type of query; the select query. MS Access has a number of types of queries available.

This series of articles will be written based on Access 2000. Newer versions of Access may have added to this list. The principles explained here should work fine on version 2000 and any newer ones.

Types of Queries

If you create a query manually (more on this later) you choose from a list of 6 query types.

• Select Query retrieves data from one or more tables (or queries!)
• Crosstab query displays summarized data in a column/row format (like pivot tables in Excel)
• Make Table query creates a new table based on data from one or more existing tables (or queries!)
• Update query updates the data in a table (a simple example would be “Add an across the board raise of 2% to each employee’s pay rate”)
• Append query adds new records (rows) to a table
• Delete query will delete records (rows) from a table

Most of the above queries accept criteria (parameters) such that only some of the records in a table are retrieved or updated.

NEXT: How to create a basic query.

I know what you are saying. “Ya, right!”

However, I am serious. My main resolution is to post more often on databaselessons.com.

I will start with a serious of postings about queries.

If you have been at the MS Access game for a while, you may find most of these query postings too simple. Well, this site is for people that are just shedding the pure wizard approach to MS Access, and so you may be right.

As always, please leave comments if you have a good one.

Thanks for reading.

Richard “Manxman” Killey

Although my favourite “filtering” method is the MS Access Query tool, I do use the Access Filtering method regularly as well. Here is an introductory discussion of Filtering in MS Access.