asked on

Automatically add columns to a query or report if they exist in an input table or query

I have a crosstab query which increases in columns as a feed table is populated to include data for new periods in the year.

An example of the crosstab output is detailed below.....

Measure 01 02 03 etc (pput eriods in a year)
ABC 1 3 7
DEF 2 9 12

From the crosstab i am running a report but i want to automatically include every period as and when the crosstab adds them, is this possible?

Apologies if its not well explained as i am struggling for the right words.

Thanks

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Dale Fye

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

SweetingA

ASKER

is it easy in a query and then i can just add another step?

Dale Fye

If your data is normalized with a Period or [SomeDate] field, which then becomes your column headers in the crosstab query, then you should not have to do anything to create the additional column in your query results.

The challenging part is displaying the output in a report. The query should export just fine to something like Excel, but you eventually run out of page space with a report, and you then have to decide which columns to include in the report.

You could implement some form of paging in your query, which would prevent more than X# of columns per page, and this would not be too difficult, but exporting to Excel is pretty simple.

SweetingA

ASKER

Used a solution by GrayL which is very simple as long as you know the eventual names of all columns - simply edit the PIVOT line of the SQL.

PIVOT qry_PDM_Results_CY.Period In ("01","02","03","04","05","06","07","08","09","10","11","12");

Thanks, could have looking for days!