Totaling a query column?

[Guest]

First let me say that I'm an access dummy that somehow became responsible for
supporting it for our entire company. But this should be an easy fix, and I'm
lost. I have a client that has Access 2002. She has a query and one of the
columns in the query is a sum of purchases.

Field: Sum of Purchases
Table: Purchases
Total: Sum
Show: Checked

So the datasheet shows a table with the person's name and the sum of all
their purchases. She wants to have a total field that would sum up the total
of all purchases that she has pulled in this query from the table.

I feel very stupid to say that I can't figure this out, but luckily my boss
is sending me to Access classes soon!

Thanks,
Carla

 

[Guest]

The problem is that you can't perform an operation on an operation in a query
(the sum of the sum). Create a second query based on the first query. Click
on your grouping button, and for the field (probably) called SumofPurchase,
your expression should be changed from Group By to Sum.

(Another option is to create a report listing the person's name and the sum
total of their purchases, and then in the Report Footer create an Unbound
textbox with the following: =sum([name of the text box in the detail
section]. This might score some points with the boss!)