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10.10.2008 at 04:18AM PDT, ID: 23803735
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9.2

Calculations with 'Null' and outer joins

Asked by jjnet123 in Access Reports

Hi,

I'm writing reports in Access, using outer joins in the query that the report is based on. This means that some fields will be blank for some records, as there is no data there.

The scenario is something like this... I have a budgets table and a spend table.

I want to include all records in the budget table, and all records in the spend table, even if nothing has been spent for a particular budget (hence, the need for an outer join).

I need to calculate total spend for each budget. Easy - use totals.

However, the total spend for a budget which has no entries, will be Null, not Zero. This causes complications when trying to do totals in the report, e.g. I want to calculate the total budget remaining for all budgets in a particular month. This would involve subtracting spend from the budget. If the budget was £240 for instance, and £10 had been spent, the budget remaining would be £230.

If however, nothing had been spent, the result of the calculation £240 - Null would be Null.

I can use an IIF for that, but it becomes even more complicated when trying to calculate a total.

Is my only route out of this to create a Union query with a "Not In" criteria specifying "0" for spend where the 'Budget ID' does not exist in the spend table? It seems a little messy...

Thanks in anticipation!Start Free Trial
[+][-]10.10.2008 at 04:29AM PDT, ID: 22685871

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Zone: Access Reports
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Solution Provided By: LSMConsulting
Participating Experts: 1
Solution Grade: A
 
 
[+][-]10.10.2008 at 04:54AM PDT, ID: 22685976

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